


The Returning

by Hagar



Series: Stubborn, Silent and Grey [8]
Category: NCIS, פצועים בראש | Ptzuim BaRosh | Scarred
Genre: Canon Israeli Characters, Canon Jewish Character, F/M, Female Jewish Character, Gen, Human Intelligence, Israel, Israeli Characters, Jewish Character, Male-Female Friendship, Novella, POV Multiple, Spies & Secret Agents, Where in the world is Ziva David?, Who killed Eli David?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-21 17:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15563301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: Ziva chases after the man who incepted her father's murder. Tony chases after her, but he already knows: Yael got there first.





	1. War Alone

**Author's Note:**

> OH MY GOD it's finally happening.
> 
> With love to IndigoMay, whose enthusiasm gave me the fuel I needed to go back and complete this fic, years after I'd given up on it.
> 
> Beta by Lovechilde, with an assist by grimview; all remaining mistakes are the author's.

_ "War alone, if it comes, will recall us home _  
_Like lovers into each other's arms after the war_  
_ If it comes, if it comes"_

-[ City of Summer](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z40-twNTyX0), Bery Sakharof

 

* * *

 

 

Figure 1: A map of the driving route from Ben Gurion Airport to Tzahala Quarter in Tel Aviv

  

* * *

 

_Sunday, August 25, 2013; Tel Aviv, Tzahala Qtr_

[Sa'ar Schiff](http://www.yitzug1.co.il/sites/default/files/styles/big_image/public/%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9D%20%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%9F%20%D7%9B%D7%94%D7%9F%206.jpg?itok=Un5yVGQb) was tall, at least for an Israeli, and stocky in a way that suggested he actually _used_ that muscle; that impression gelled with his face, which looked as if he'd gotten into a few fights too many. Yet his scowl at Avi and Ziva, who turned up at his townhouse's door at three in the morning with only a 20-minute warning, failed to be menacing.

"Next time I'll let you sleep at a hotel, I fucking swear," Sa'ar grumbled as he let Avi and Ziva through the front door.

"Sure you will, bro," Avi replied easily. "This is Ziva, by the way."

Ziva raised her hand in a half-wave.

"Where'd you find her, the jungle?"

"Ashkara," Avi and Ziva replied, simultaneously.

Sa'ar's shoulders relaxed a touch. That made sense; _She's one of Us,_ Avi had said over the phone - referring to his and Sa'ar's past in Duvdevan - when he'd called to inform Sa'ar they'd be crashing his place fresh from Ben Gurion; the easy synchronism supported that statement.

Sa'ar huffed, looked them over critically, then sighed. "At least take your shoes off before you go upstairs."

"And here I thought you'd hose us down out in the yard," Avi said.

"We're not _that_ filthy," Ziva objected.

The look Sa'ar gave her spoke volumes.

"Nah, Sa'ar's just that kind of fucked up," said another guy as he came downstairs. This one had his hair close-cropped in the manner typical of early-balding Israeli men; he looked as average as possible - except, Ziva realized, he'd stayed _in_ whereas Sa'ar had left. Not Duvdevan, not the Service - thank goodness, she'd be screwed if he was - but maybe _magav_ or even the ordinary, "Blue" police force.

"I would, except you'd give me that _look_ ," Sa'ar retorted.

"Nah, bro, I'd tell[ Zohar](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pb21N2vlPaE/Ufu4TKUWNnI/AAAAAAAAAec/-pfa4vPNDu4/s1600/46641800100198408590no.jpg). I'm[ Yaki](http://images1.ynet.co.il/PicServer3/2013/06/04/4664195/46641790100397408575no.jpg), by the way," the maybe-cop introduced himself to Ziva.

"Ziva," she replied shortly.

"And I'm what?" Avi demanded, raising his arms dramatically.

"MIA ten months out of twelve. I almost forgot what you look like; gimme a hug."

"Underweight, is what he is," Sa'ar hissed. "Both of you. What'd you eat, insects?"

"No catburgers in Africa," Ziva said.

Sa'ar grabbed the back of Yaki's shirt and pulled him off Avi. "No, _really._ Get off him or you're sleeping on the floor."  He had, however, let the hug linger, Ziva noticed: clearly Shaul Schiff's son was all bark and no bite where his friends were concerned.

Yaki gently bumped shoulders with Sa'ar. "Shut up," he said, affection dripping off his voice.

"Or what’re you gonna do to me?"

"Still haven't learned to keep it to the bedroom," Avi remarked.

"Israeli men never do," Ziva replied.

"Oh, because you'd know."

That stung - not that there was any way Avi could know how badly. Ziva retorted: "Am I wrong?"

Sa'ar raised both of arms, palms facing forward in a theatrical gesture of surrender. "Shut up already. Yaki, you know where the towels are. _None of you_ are getting into a bed in this house like _that._ "

"And you'll be?" Yaki demanded.

Sa'ar looked at him as if he slipped and dropped his brain. "You blind or stupid? _I'm_ going to get them _fed._ "

 

* * *

 

Figure 2: Quarters of Tel Aviv mentioned in this chapter. Pin #1 notes the Tel Aviv Harbor

 

* * *

 

_Friday, August 30, 2013; Tel Aviv Harbor_

The Harbor was her idea.

Noam refused to voice an opinion beyond his original suggestion of "coffee". Many if not most men preferred to leave the choice up to the woman they were courting, so as to not appear pushy or controlling; it was a common enough dating practice, but Yael still found it annoying. This was Tel Aviv, and one's choice of a coffee spot was unavoidably revealing. Noam was resigned to the idea of a mall coffee shop, or something else equally impersonal. He didn't need to say a word: close enough to touch was close enough for Yael to _know._ Noam disliked the idea, she knew, and she disliked his resignation, and that it was on account of her.

So it was her idea, going to the Harbor. It was bright and sunny and _packed,_ all the more so because this was the last Friday of August and the Holidays were less than a week away, and that -

That was _such_ a good idea.

Noam and her both smiled when they saw each other, the sort of a smile borne of genuine amusement. They matched without looking as if they'd tried to. They'd both gone for the same style of clothing: shirt and shorts that could very nearly pass for the epitome of Israeli casual, except the fabric was nicer than one would wear daily, the cut of their respective shirts more becoming than either of them ordinarily wore, the shades of white and tan and blue precise.

The white and tan were hers; the blue was Noam's, vivid enough to remain so even under the white summer sun. As they walked from Aroma towards the farmers’ market, the light hit Noam's face; it lit up the blue of his eyes and washed out the lines of his face, framed against the backdrop of the sea. By then, the early awkwardness had faded.

It occurred to her she hadn't expected the date to actually be _fun_.

 

* * *

 

_Sunday, September 1, 2013; Washington DC_

 

Tim was anything but surprised when Tony turned up on his doorstep on Sunday afternoon. He knew what folders he'd handed to Tony on Friday, and he knew that Tony wouldn't want to talk about it at the office.

"So," Tony said as he breezed through the door, completely ignoring Tim's attempt at a greeting, "let me get this straight. SOCOM has a whole special task force for Philippe Marchand."

"It does."

"And last month, it sent a pretty serious force after him."

"That's right."

"Because something or some _one_ rattled him enough that he actually made a mistake."

"Yes."

"Interesting timing."

"I thought so too."

"But the boys from Delta weren't the only ones chasing Marchand. They were on the trail together with - an environmental consulting group?"

"Security consultants specializing in environmental clients, yes. Did you know that illegal poaching funds -"

"- at least half the terrorist activity in Africa, yes, I know." Tony paused. "You flagged this because someone _seriously_ spooked Marchand, and the armed environmentalists had a woman with them. Right?"

"Yes, but that's not all. Tony, seriously, sit down."

"I don't want to sit down."

"So at least stop pacing all over my living room."

"I'm not pacing."

"Yes, you are."

"Fine." Tony stopped in place. "So what am I not seeing?"

"Did you look Mokili Consulting up?"

"Yeah. Not a whole lot on their homepage, but that's about what I'd expect." Tony paused. "You found out more. Do you know if that really was Ziva with them? Do you know why? She's more the lone cowboy type. Cowgirl. Bad thought, Tony. Bad thought."

Tim sighed. "Tony, seriously, sit down. Yes, I think that really was Ziva, and I think I know why she teamed up with those guys."

Tony sat on the edge of the armchair. "I'm going to hate this, aren't I."

"Yes," Tim agreed. "Mokili is an Israeli company."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. They hid their trail well enough to give prospective clients plausible deniability, but… they're all Israelis. And that's not all."

"How long did you sit on this file before giving it to me, Timmy?"

"Most of a week," Tim admitted.

"Why -"

"Because I wanted to have answers when you started asking questions."

"Fair enough," Tony conceded. "So, the question we're all dying to know the answer to: is Mokili Consulting a front for the Mossad?"

"One way or another, they probably are. You know how this works." Even if Mokili wasn't a shell company, its people could still be reporting back to Israeli intel. All countries did this, but Israel in particular had made this an art form.

"True. So, what next?"

"I'm going to try and track their real names, or at least some of them. They'll have to use those to buy plane tickets."

"Not if they're actually Mossad," Tony said darkly.

"If those are Mossad aliases, they'll still use them to buy tickets for their aliases. And if Ziva's traveling with them…"

Tony lit up. "Then we know what passenger manifest to hack."

Ziva's name was flagged. They couldn't search or track her passport records directly; Tim wasn't willing to risk that, and no matter how well he could hide his trail. But if he was looking for someone else, and Ziva happened to board the same flight as them - that could work.

"How long do you think that'll take?" Tony asked.

"I have no idea," Tim admitted. "They really like their privacy, and they know what they're doing. If they're not active intelligence, then they're former intelligence."

"There's no such thing as former intelligence, Tim. You and I both know that."

"You didn't use to believe that," Tim said. He regretted it immediately as Tony shot him a look.

"What makes you say that?"

 _Well, shit_. But Tim couldn't back out now. Still, he hesitated a long moment before he said: "Ziva."

He really, really shouldn't have brought that up. For a moment, Tony seemed gutted. Then he stuffed it back down and pushed himself to his feet. "I'll see you tomorrow, Tim."

Tim sighed. "Yeah. I'll see you too."

 

* * *

 

_Wednesday, September 4, 2013; Jewish New Year’s Eve; Tel Aviv, Bavli Qtr_

She'd only been in Israel for a little over a week, and already her plan was falling apart.

Ziva had already been thinking of Shaul Schiff when she and the Mokili team crossed paths. She could hunt Marchand down, she was sure of it, but more and more she doubted if that was the best she could do. Marchand had committed atrocities, yes, and would continue to commit them until he was stopped. But Ziva wasn't hunting him because of the crimes he committed against his people and their neighbours: she was hunting him because his operation provided the funding for her father's murder, because - and that was how she ended up on his trail - he personally had had selected the people Bodnar had worked with. But Ziva was no longer sure that the Iran negotiation was the only reason Ilan Bodnar had turned on her father.

She'd known Ilan, once upon a time, and there were ways in which a person never changed. He'd carried out this plan, this betrayal; that was Ilan Bodnar. He might even have come up with the plan. But crossing the mental barrier required in order to come up with the _idea_ \- no, that wasn't like Ilan at all. Someone else had wanted Ziva's father dead: this person was an Israeli, most likely a man, someone Ilan would've confided in and to whom he'd've listened. Ziva’s time would be better spent chasing that person. Still, she stayed on Marchand's trail because she had no way leads on the track that went back to Israel. Then she ran into the Mokili team, and got lucky enough to be handed a ticket into the home of Shaul Schiff's son.

She couldn't have known that she wasn't the only person sleeping under Sa'ar Schiff's roof. It shouldn't have mattered, but they didn't know why she was there.

The door to the apartment building's roof creaked. Footsteps approached her; a man's. "Ziva?" Yaki asked. "I was hoping you'd be here. Here, have a beer."

His voice drew closer as he spoke, until he was right behind her. Ziva turned: he was indeed holding a Goldstar out to her.

She stared.

"I can't drink it anyway, my mom would kill me," he said.

It was, Ziva reflected, the sort of a statement that only made sense once you _knew_ Geula. "But not me."

"She likes you. And besides," he put the bottle next to her elbow and leaned on the other side of it, "you're clearly not having a very good holiday."

"I'm sorry for ruining dinner."

"Ziva," Yaki said, very patiently, his accent coming through thick. "My mom wouldn't have you be anywhere else. And neither would I."

She'd gone to New Year's dinners in DC her very few years there, and those families had been Ashkenazi, their practices and the melodies of their prayers different from her own. The Mishaalis' were closer, close enough that Ziva had to run. She hadn't even meant to be here, but Sa'ar had vetoed any guests at his family's dinner with extreme prejudice, and Yaki had wanted her to come so badly, and it was only his mother and himself, now…

She reached for the beer, but snatched her hand back at the last moment; it shook too much.

Yaki snorted and cracked the top off for her. She could hold the bottle if she was careful, but her hands were just not stable enough to crack the lid off without a bottle opener, which Yaki hadn't brought.

"You don't need to talk about it," Yaki said quietly. "I know, believe me."

He'd lost his father, too. David Mish'aali had been murdered, gunned down, and the way Yaki shut down and Sa'ar glowered whenever that was mentioned made Ziva think that David had been murdered as vengeance for something his police officer son had done.

Ziva shook her head. She didn't trust herself to speak. Anything she could say right now would be poison, bitter and sharp, and Ziva didn't have it in her to be vicious with Sa'ar or with anyone he cared for. She hadn't expected Avi to not even _warn_ Sa'ar in advance that he was coming, let alone that he was bringing another person. But Sa'ar opened the door to them at three in the morning without question, cooked as they took turns in the shower, insisted that Ziva should stay until she got her feet under her; Zohar had come downstairs as soon as she heard another woman's voice, had made herself Ziva's friend with simple Israeli directness that Ziva had forgotten how much she'd missed; and Yaki hasn't spoken much, then or since, but he'd fought for Ziva to spend this Holiday - one of the two most important family Holidays - with him and his mother, and there he was standing next to her now, watching her with sad, kind eyes.

Ziva swallowed. "We should go back. Your mother will worry."

"I wasn't going to chase you down the street with a beer in my hand," Yaki pointed out. "She knows we didn't get far."

 _She'll still worry_. Which Yaki damn well knew, by his rueful tone. What he meant was, _She knows not to worry too much. Take as long as you need_. He probably had right the measure of his mom, but Ziva was going to fall apart again the second she was in the same room as Geula.

"I never asked," Yaki said quietly. "Your mother…"

Ziva shook her head. She forced herself to say: "I wasn't here when it happened."

"Kuss emmek. Zayin." Yaki passed a hand over hair he didn't really have, anymore. "Sorry. That was inappropriate."

Ziva snorted. "Thank you." What she meant was, _I understand the sentiment_.

Yaki shook his head. "C'mon. And you can't have another one of these," he indicated the beer as they walked towards the roof's exit, "or Zohar's gonna kill us both tomorrow."

 

* * *

 

_Sunday, September 8, 2013; Washington DC_

 

Tim's expression as Tony waltzed through the door was priceless.

"And here I thought you'd be bringing pizza."

"Nope," Tony said cheerfully. "Nothing but the best for my McGeek."

"You know it makes me worry when you buy me sushi." Tim really did sound worried. He also headed straight to the kitchen.

Tony followed him, sushi trays in hand. "Was I wrong?"

"No," Tim admitted as he retrieved the good teriyaki from the fridge. "You weren't. Let's sit down."

Tony dutifully got through several pieces of maki - and let Tim do the same as well - before he asked: "So, what did you find out? Did you get any of their names?"

"Yeah, I did," Tim sighed. "And we weren't wrong. Former Special Ops, former Mossad - they even have people who're former 8200."

Military SIGINT. "Like Effie."

"I'm not asking her anything, Tony. She already knows we were sniffing around Central Africa. If she finds out we're looking at Israelis…"

"We're toast," Tony finished. Effie had helped Tim make the connection between Clive Goddard and Philippe Marchand, off the clock. That wasn't strictly kosher - or legal - any number of ways. And maybe Effie wasn't technically part of Israel's Intelligence Community anymore, maybe she was relatively willing to bend the rules - but yeah: she would turn around the second she realized there was an Israeli connection to what Tim had asked her to do.

Tim continued. "Some of the guys I got names on were on the ground in the Central African Republic. I can't match them to names from the report, but it doesn't matter. They were all on an Ethiopian Airlines flight out of Congo a day after the initial report was sent."

The timing was good, but… Tony frowned. He speared another maki with his chopstick. "Why Ethiopian Airlines?"

"Probably because that flight was bound to Addis Ababa."

"They were going back to Israel."

"And they weren't the only ones."

Tony put the next maki down without touching it.

Ziva.

"Ziva was also on that flight," Tim confirmed.

Mokili - and Ziva - had left Congo the day after the task force sent out their initial report. He could reasonably assume that all these people had left the Central African Republic at the same time: eight days before the initial report was sent. "How long does it take to - where did they fly out of?"

"Brazzaville. And about four days."

Tony struggled with the math. The Israelis had left the Central African Republic eight days before their flight, but it only took half that to make the ground trip. They'd spent three days in Brazzaville and, unless Tony completely messed up the time zone conversion, the day they'd arrived in Brazzaville was the day Yael had sent him the first email about Ziva's location.

Had Yael already known where Ziva was headed? A shiver ran down Tony's spine.

"Tony?" Tim asked carefully.

Tony pushed his plate away and declared: "I lost my appetite."

Tim nodded sympathetically. "I wonder why she'd go back, too."

"That's just it, Tim. I don't."

"You don't wonder why she'd go back to Israel."

"Nope." Tony closed his eyes. This part of the conversation, he suspected, was going to make him angry. "Same reason she was in Africa to begin with."

"You don't think…"

"She's found a better target than Marchand," Tony confirmed the obvious.

"Tony, if she's chasing a trail inside Israeli Intelligence…"

"I know."

"She's going to -"

"I said I _know_." Yeah, this conversation was making him angry.

"This is going to _kill her_."

Tony opened his eyes. " _Now_ you get it?" Tim had been one of Ziva’s enablers for far too long.

Tim stared at him pressed-lip for a long moment, then visibly shook himself. "Fine. What do we do?"

"I need a plane ticket to Israel."

"And what are you going to do when you get there? How are you going to find her?"

"I have a way." There was no way Israeli Intel didn't have Tony's passport flagged. Yael was going to find _him_. And then they were going to _talk_.

 

* * *

 

_Monday, September 9, 2013; Tel Aviv, Old North Qtr_

 

"Did Yael call you?" Danielle asked over the phone. At least she'd said hello before dropping the bomb.

Zvi stared at the shakshuka in the pan. "Not since Thursday, she hasn't."

"Talk to her."

Coming from Danielle, that wasn't a suggestion, and not just because of that no-nonsense tone of voice. Anyone who thought Danielle's smarts were limited to math had missed a very important memo. "What did she do?" Zvi asked.

"Only the Devil knows," Danielle said. She sounded particularly ticked off, which was no surprise given it was common wisdom among the Dunski side of the family that even God couldn't keep up with Gorens and the Devil only caught up with them every other time. Danielle was technically a Goren-Dunski, but she picked the Dunski side of the never-ending family quarrel more often than not.

"That's an optimistic assessment. Now seriously, Danielle. What's going on?"

"Omer's fidgety about her, and he can't pinpoint why."

As bad signs went that was pretty damn bad. Yael's little brother had a better grasp on her moods than anyone, and if Omer couldn't say _why_ he was worried, that meant Yael was putting even more of an effort than usual into pretending nothing was the matter. Which would be why she hadn't spoken to Zvi, who'd made it abundantly clear that red lights were for people other than him.

There were only so many people Yael would talk to; if it wasn't Omer or him, then she might've talked to her dad. Zvi _could_ talk to Uncle Tal, but not without his own dad finding out. The cousin pack preferred to look after each other without involving their parents, if at all possible. That left one other person Yael might confide in. "What does Shai say?"

"Do you want to call him? Because Omer didn't."

Oh, hell no. Zvi only liked explosions when he wasn't in range of them, and no one stuck their nose in the dynamic between Omer and Shai who wanted to live. Zvi had better odds picking Yael's lock - which he'd be doing if she wouldn't answer the phone call that he was, apparently, about to make. He sighed. "Oh _fine_."

Talya stepped into the kitchen.

"Hold on," Zvi told Danielle.

"Yael?" his wife asked as she reached for the vegetables and the knife.

Zvi nodded.

"You last talked on Thursday, right? Think she managed to squeeze a date in since then?"

Zvi looked up from the frying pan to stare at his wife. "Danielle," he said into the phone, "did Omer say when things got weird?"

"Yesterday," Danielle replied promptly. "I heard that, say hi to Talya for me, but didn’t her first date go great?"

"Exactly."

"It's Yael, she's incapable of messing anything up."

" _Exactly_."

Talya gave him an amused look; if she didn't hear what Danielle said she very well guessed.

On the phone, Danielle asked: "Do I want to know?"

"Do you want to get really angry?"

"That's a no. All right - we'll talk."

"We'll talk," he echoed, and put the phone away.

"So," Talya asked conversationally, "would this be your darling cousin not knowing what to do with someone who loves her, or -"

"Or you only refer to her as _my_ cousin when you're pissed off with her."

"And you're the most protective of her when you're most aware she's messed up. I love Yael, Zvi, but the only friend she's made in ten years is me, and even that was only once she started considering me family."

 _Women are harder for her_ , Zvi almost said, but that was an excuse and he knew better. Talya was right: Yael didn't do well with new people, men or women, and her dating history indicated she wouldn't know what to do with someone who actually knew her _and_ cared about her. Yael had dated more people than Zvi cared to count, and she'd picked every single one of them already with the intent of letting them go, had shown all of them what she thought they needed to see. Noam was new territory entirely and there was no doubt Yael would freak out about it at some point, but this was just too early for that particular meltdown.

Yael had wanted so badly for that first date to be good, and Yael's idea of "good" was firmly focused about the other person. It made Yael happy, to use the same skills that made her an excellent predator to care for people instead. Problem was, Yael was just as terrifying trying to wrap someone with love as she was taking them apart; anybody smart and perceptive enough for her to like was going to catch up the second the high wore off, and no way would that go anywhere good.

Zvi said, "You've seen her be adorable at people. And she wants this to work. Now imagine what that might look like if you're in love with her, and you know what she looks like on the job."

"Exactly," Talya replied calmly. "He knows what she's like on the job and he fell for her _anyway_. So it might take him another day to work it out. So? He's already got this."

"Not _him_ I'm worried about," Zvi said wryly. The sauce was finally ready; he poured the eggs into the pan. The reason he was so worried about how Yael might react to rejection from someone she actually cared about - they never talked about it. There has never been a need, and now Zvi had no idea how to talk about it at all.

Then again, he didn't need to.

Talya gave him a pointed look. "Did you forget I _know_ her?"

Because yeah, Talya knew Yael. She'd seen everything that Zvi has over the past six or seven years, and if she didn't know how this story had started then she damn well knew what it looked like now.

Talya would invite Yael over to watch whatever on TV, not just because Yael couldn't care less about Talya's habit of bitching at the TV, but also because Yael would comfortably curl up on the couch next to her, and Talya damn well knew what that meant and how long it took.

"Asaf!" She raised her voice. "Get Itamar and come to dinner!"

"Coming, Mom!"

Talya's timing was perfect, giving Zvi a second to gather himself. He'd been tense since he heard Danielle's tone on the phone, even before he knew what this was about. Talya just made that tension dissipate.

"I love you," Zvi said quietly.

She looked at him, something like a frown disappearing from around her eyes. "I love you."

 

* * *

 

_Monday, September 16, 2013; Washington DC_

Tony's desk phone rang. He picked it up. "DiNozzo."

"Come to my office," Director Vance said. "Quietly."

"I'll see what I can do."

Vance hung up.

Tony gave it three minutes then stood up, stretched and walked away. So long as he acted as if nothing was up, nobody was going to notice that anything was. He didn't take the stairs. Rather, he went in the direction of the break room then turned around made his way to the rear elevator, which he took up to Vance's floor.

Cynthia knew to expect him, and waved him in.

"Agent DiNozzo."

"Sir."

Tony started in the direction of Vance's desk, but Vance waved him towards the conference table. So Tony probably wasn't in trouble; that was good to know.

"You filed a request for some time off."

"Yes, sir."

"A little last minute."

"Something came up."

"In Israel?"

There was no point lying. If Vance made that statement then he'd looked it up. "Yes."

"Would this have anything to do with Ziva David?"

Five years before Vance hadn't trusted Ziva or her loyalties, but things had changed. "Yes."

"I thought she was in Africa?"

"Well, apparently she hopped on a plane."

Vance looked at him for a long moment before he said: "How about you tell me what's really going on."

"She was chasing whoever had put Bodnar in touch with Goddard."

"And _that_ trail led to _Israel?_ "

"Or she decided to pursue Bodnar's end of things instead." This wasn't Somalia - Vance was willing to give him a lot more rope this time - but Tony couldn't give up any of his sources. He couldn't admit to what he actually knew. Vance would know there were things Tony wasn't telling; the Director had made his career in NCIS' darker branches and has been playing the intel game longer than Tony - but that was exactly why Vance wouldn't necessarily ask.

The Director's gaze sharpened. "Do you know what you're getting yourself into, DiNozzo?"

"Probably not, Sir, but with all due respect -"

Vance cut him off. "You misunderstood. I'm not going to try and stop you. Not for that reason." Vance pushed himself up.

"Sir?"

Vance didn't answer. He went behind his desk, handled a safe installed in one of the cabinets and returned with two folders. "Orly Elbaz wasn't first in line to become Director. She wasn't second either, or even third. Following Eli's assassination, the Israelis instigated a serious investigation into their own ranks. The Mossad and the Shin-Beit are not the only intelligence organizations in Israel. There's another organization, much smaller; it doesn't even have a name. It's only known by the title of its chief: the Director of Security in the Defense Establishment, DSDE for short, or in Hebrew, _Malmab_. The Office of the DSDE is the control agency for the rest of Israel's intelligence community, not so much in terms of legality as in terms of opsec."

"Well, Bodnar certainly qualifies. So it was the Malmab who conducted this investigation."

"Yes. "

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Until 2007, the Malmab himself was a man called Yehiel Chorev. Chorev had been the Malmab for decades. This," Vance tapped the thicker folder, "is everything the United States knows about him."

"And the other folder?"

"That's everything we know about the current Malmab, Naomi Goren."

Tony stared. That folder couldn't have more than a few pages in it. "That isn't a lot." The Israelis weren't usually opsec fanatics, and when they were - well, in Tony's experience, that was always very bad news.

"She's made her entire career in the malmab, and so under our radar. Most of the things we do know about her come from the Population Registry. She was born in Ramat Gan in 1958 to Amiram and Chava Goren. She has two older brothers, Yonatan and Michael. Her brothers were officers in _sayeret matkal_ , just like their father. Naomi married at age 21 and has two children."

"That's a very accommodating husband. Who, incidentally, you didn't name. Or not so incidentally." Vance named Naomi Goren's parents and brothers; the omission of her husband's name was glaring.

"His name is Tal Dunski. Her oldest daughter is…"

"...Yael Dunski."

"Yes."

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. This was the piece of the puzzle that Tony had been missing. And if Vance was telling him all this then he'd already figured out -

But the director didn't ask, _Have you been talking to Yael Dunski?_ Which meant that for some reason, Tony wasn't in trouble _yet_. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"I'm going to approve your time off. We put Ziva on this track -" Vance raised his hand - "- all of us but you. I'm aware."

"Is this supposed to be an apology, _Sir_?"

"No. But I'm still going to sign off on your request"

Those were terms Tony could live with. He pushed himself up. "Thank you, sir."

"Do try and come back alive, Agent DiNozzo."

"I'll do my best."

 


	2. Not Another Minute

_"Not another day, not another minute_  
_You've always known_  
_There's no more room for love_  
_And you won't give up_  
_On one more day, or on one more minute"_

-[ Not Another Day](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8PL2CmM9rg), Gidi Gov

 

_Tuesday, September 24, 2013; Tel Aviv, Basel Square_

Ice cream had been his idea. Technically it was Yael's turn to choose, but there was the aftermath of their previous date to consider. He'd been off-balance when he named the bar he thought of as _his_ for their second date; off-balance, suspicious and in need of a confidence boost. It was meant as a message for Yael, a response to her smoothness at their first date. He'd expected her to either take that as a challenge - in which case a breakup was due - or tone things down to a normal level. He hadn't expected her to freak out the second she realized he'd staged their second date on his home turf.

This was how they did almost break up on the second date - just, not the way he expected to. On the bright side, if they managed to salvage this disaster on only their second date, they could probably weather anything. That said, the third date was still his turn to pick a place; not so much because he was at fault but rather because Yael believed she was, and so would see it as a test rather than forgiveness if he left this turn to her.

The idea of going for ice cream, though, that was a test - for himself, to see if he was closer to getting how Yael thinks. _Third time ice cream!_ was what you said to someone you ran into twice and liked enough to meet a third and a fourth time. It was childlike and silly, so old that his parents had used it as a pick-up line when they were half as old as he was now. Going for ice cream on the third date was ridiculous in its cutesiness.

It was - Noam thought as he watched Yael, the sort of seemingly-distracted that really meant relaxed, order marshmallow, peanut butter and whiskey flavors, with sprinkles on top - _such_ a good idea.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Figure 2: Neighbourhoods and locations mentioned in this chapter, from Tel Aviv Center north (top panel) and south (bottom panel). Pins: 1 - Tel Aviv Harbor, 2 - Bazel Square, 3 - Hertzliya Train Station, 4 - Carmel Market, 5 - Alleby St.'s club strip.

 

* * *

_Friday, 27 September, 09:30; Tel Aviv Harbor_

 

Tel Aviv Harbor's Friday Farmers' Market was particularly busy. The day before had been Simchat Torah and technically, this was the first day after the holidays; practically speaking, though, After The Holidays wouldn't begin until Sunday. In the meantime, everyone was in need of groceries and in desperate need of any semblance of normalcy. Thus, the market was packed.

Shira was at the indoors market's northern side, standing in line for sandwiches and slurping on the remains of her coffee slushie. It was summer-hot still, but that wasn't the reason she'd put on the most obnoxious gym clothes she had. Rather, it was to keep random strangers from staring at the clearly-heavy shopping bags hanging off each of her shoulders and how easily she carried them. Inspiring passersby to draw their own conclusions - be those "gym instructor" or "over-achieving young professional with money to spare" - was that much easier than the alternatives.

Yael turned up at her shoulder just as Shira reached the counter. When she turned her head from having placed their order, Shira had to bite her tongue against laughter: Yael put on a perfect performance of sullen resentment, staring at the bags not unlike a cat faced with a tub of water. Yael's problem wasn't the weight Shira carried, but rather that it included Yael's groceries as well as Shira's. At least _she_ kept her performance silent: in her place, Zvi would be bitching his baby sister out loudly and at length.

Shira handed Yael the empty coffee cup to toss away while they waited for their food, and didn't protest as Yael reached for both paper bags to carry with both cups of fresh juice.

There was no need to talk about where they were going to sit down with their second breakfast. The boardwalk's north end overlooked the mouth of the Yarkon and the Reading power plant across. It was the quietest spot at the Harbor, and the only place they could sit with a wall at their back and a clear view of the three other directions.

Shira nodded as she accepted her sandwich and  juice from Yael. "So guess who got her first weekend pass from Basic?"

"What's Nohar gonna do with it?"

"She actually wants to spend it with her family."

Yael's eyebrows climbed up. "What does Amit think?"

Six months before, Shira had run into Nohar Schiff at the Pergola. It took her a moment to recognize her old classmate's younger sister who she hadn't seen since Nohar was a toddler, but once she did, Shira wasn't surprised to find the girl at a nightclub she was too young to legally enter; the Schiffs had done badly enough by Nohar's older brother Sa'ar, and _he_ was their first-born, and a son at that. So Shira kept by Nohar that night, then took her home and put her up on the living room couch, then made breakfast the next morning while Liran - who made a living connecting with suspicious, neglected teens - coaxed information out of the girl.

After they ate, Shira drove Nohar over to her parents' house; Liran hadn't even tried to come with - he'd looked at the relaxed set of Shira's shoulders and knew that would be a bad idea. Shaul was too sick and tired to work himself up for any worthwhile rage, but his wife certainly pitched a scene as her daughter packed her things. Shira reminded the Schiffs who she was - _exactly_ who she was, which Ziva Schiff had forgotten - and laid down the way things were going to be. Shira had talked to her Aunt Ilana and Uncle Michael while Liran and Nohar ate; Nohar could commute to her high school from their place. More importantly, Amit was up for taking Nohar in. Cut from the same cloth as Yael and Shai, Amit was key for keeping Nohar in her new foster home and otherwise grounding her.

Besides which, a live-in attention-starved age-peer was the best gift Shira could've gotten her youngest cousin.

Shira laughed. "Amit called Sa'ar to inform him of the doom he'll be facing should he ruin this for Nohar, what do you _think_ she did? Then complained how everybody's schedules weren't going to line up ever again."

"At least, not until her discharge party," Yael added dryly.

Shira returned the expression. "Anyway, I talked to Seffi. We got the best table in the house and our own waitress."

"Anyone we know?"

"Nope. He rotated them again."

Seffi was the Pergola's owner and manager. Former Special Forces, Seffi had sense enough to realize there was a niche in the night scene for a place _Qehiliya_ people would feel safe enough to socialize like normal people. The Pergola was the cousin pack's usual hangout for that reason; Shira was Seffi's favorite and so the pack's ambassador when they needed special accommodations - for example, fitting the entire pack complete with their spouses on the Friday night which so happened to be the only time all their schedules aligned so they could throw Amit a draft party.

Yael leaned back. "So that's all set."

 _If you know what you're wearing that is,_ Shira thought, but didn't say out loud. Not because this was - technically - a debrief; not because she was younger than Yael either - they were close enough in age that it hardly mattered and besides, Shira was coming in on two years of marriage whereas Yael was only just entering the first serious relationship of her life. The reason Shira didn't need to poke at Yael's likely anxiety was that wasn't how the pack's division of emotional labour worked out. Keeping _Summer Asylum_ on track was Shira's job; sorting Yael herself out was Zvi and Talya's.

Shira leaned back as well and said: "Yeah, all set."

 

* * *

 

_10:20; Hertzliya, Hertzliya Train Station_

The Hertzliya train station was packed full of parents waiting on their children, as well as taxi drivers. Sa'ar was Nohar's brother, not her parent, but that wasn't the only reason he felt awkward and out of place. He'd never picked Nohar up before, from anywhere: it's been taxis before Nohar got her license and her own car, and in either case they could always count on Shim'on. Who would've thought his dad's lifelong aide would've murdered two women - one of whom had been Sa'ar's fiancee - then tried to frame Sa'ar for it?

Sa'ar shut down the thought of Shim'on. Not fast enough: one of the mothers side-eyed him. Sa'ar's eyes flicked down to the woman's stance - the distance between her feet, the angle of her hips - and he offered an apologetic half-shrug instead of a pacifying smile.

A sea of olive-drab flooded the carousels then spilled through the sliding doors and down the front stairs. The train-load was almost entirely soldiers, all of them girls, all from basic: civilians avoided the train on Fridays unless their lives literally depended on it, and soldiers past basic would die - or kill - rather than leave base on Friday instead of Thursday.

And somewhere in this sea of same-age same-uniform girls Sa'ar had to locate -

"Nohar!" He called out, pushing through the crowd.

"What are you even _doing_ here?" His sister demanded even as she took off her bag and promptly handed it to him.

"Being your brother. What's in this thing, rocks?" He demanded as he hefted it on his shoulders. "My 28 day bag didn't weigh this much!"

"That's because it weighed three times as much. No, seriously now, how'd you even know I'd be here?"

"It was here or Train Central."

"Plenty of buses off Arlozorov."

"Intake Season Friday? Place makes a zoo look tame."

Three weeks prior, Nohar would've retorted with _What if I changed my mind and I want to do Shabbat with Amit's family instead?_ Now, though, she tipped her chin sideways and raised her eyebrows, a silent _what's true is true_ , then turned her head and called out: "Mir-mir! Ass over here, we're giving you a ride."

At _Mir-mir_ , a tiny dark girl turned her head; at _a ride,_ several others did as well. Sa'ar watched the subtle game as the girls made eye contact through the crowd, sorting themselves according to how much they needed that ride and the strength of their relationship with Nohar. A standard sedan could fit two or three passengers other than his sister and himself - Sa'ar's car wasn't a sedan. Not quite as loud as his sister, he called out: "Got room for more."

Nohar was completely at ease, Sa'ar noted as their group walked to the car. She wasn't uncomfortable or self-conscious, even when the other girls realized Sa'ar's car was the sleek, imposing SUV. Then again, the girls didn't seem jealous or intimidated, either. The situation was carefree, happy, nothing like -

Their parents had never come to pick him up either, Sa'ar remembered suddenly: not when he was in service, and not before then.

Nohar glanced up at him; the other girls were all seated and belted in already. Sa'ar hurriedly fit Nohar's bag with the others then went around the front of the car to the driver's side. "All right," he declared once the engine revved up. "Tell me what my route is."

 

* * *

 

_11:50; Tel Aviv, Carmel Market_

 

The Carmel Market was beyond packed. It forced Ziva and Yaki to put their backs flush against the wall while they argued over where to eat. Shmuel's was always a safe choice, but if the best kebab joint in Tel Aviv had one disadvantage, its popularity was it; they'd  bought several trays of uncooked kebab to stick in Geula's freezer instead.

Yaki shot a venomous look at the Mexican joint down the alley from them.

That was going to be a problem, Ziva thought. Anywhere sufficiently Established for Yaki to approve of would be too packed for either of them.

Yaki must've failed to realize the reason for her annoyance, because he said: " _Tzfonim_ just can't stay on their side of town, huh? Gotta come and ruin a good thing."

Ziva rolled her eyes. "The only thing getting ruined is the decor when they close down." She pointed at a place that seemed to have been transported straight from 100 kilometers south. "That's more like it."

"No."

"What's wrong with it? Seems like your kind of a place."

Yaki lowered his chin as his eyebrows shot up in an expression of disapproving surprise. "You're kidding, right? That's my mom's food."

"That's the point," Ziva snapped back; the place's name was literally _Mammas_.

"No."

"What's your problem? Your mom'll just be happy you have a life and friends to go out with, she won't mind."

"Well, I do."

Ziva threw her hands up in the air, though carefully though as to not get hit by the heavy bags of halva and kebab hanging off her shoulders. " _Achla._ There's a McDonald's on Allenby."

"That's a Burger King."

"Oh, you're a Tel Avivian now?"

"Hey, watch it. Or I'll tell Sa'ar that was your idea."

Sa'ar was bound to go on an hour-long rant if the Mc-word was mentioned next to him. Ziva glared at Yaki, who didn't even try to not look smug. Sa'ar would be cooking nothing but Yaki's favorites for _weeks_ in exchange for this nugget of intel, and Yaki damn well knew that. Ziva had used the excuse of the Holidays to look for neither a job nor a stable place to stay, and that meant she still depended on Sa’ar’s generosity.

A cry carried through the market: "Burika, burika, burika!"

The two of them started in the direction of the burika stand without so much as exchanging a glance.

"That works," Ziva commented.

"Walla? I thought you're going for a real lunch."

"Weren't you of the opinion I was ruined by Americans?"

"You _were_ ruined by Americans, and I submit your skipping Friday family dinner as evidence."

"I'm not skipping Friday family dinner, I'm skipping sitting at the table with you and Zohar, with your mother to incite you to being overly cute and no Sa'ar to check your behavior."

"Sa'ar does not _check_ me. I don't even want to live in a world where that's true." Yaki paused, then continued in a different tone: "But you're right about my mom."

" _Lo, be'emet_."

"My girlfriend can get away with that. You're not my girlfriend. And look, if the alternative is you going to a bar - _oof_." Yaki stopped in the middle of the busy market without warning, which predictably resulted in someone - or three - running into him. Ziva neatly angled herself to avoid the same. "You want a _light_ lunch. You aren't going to a bar; you have a dinner invitation."

"Careful, if you get any smarter they'll kick you out of the police."

"Very funny. Your taste in people is even worse than mine. Whose rap sheet am I running?"

"Your own."

"No, seriously, Ziva." Then the light bulb went on inside his head and his expression cleared. "Ehud invited you."

"No, the Prophet Eliyahu did." Ziva resumed walking.

Yaki hurried to catch up with her. " _Lechi tizdayni._ "

"Ehud's not really in my age bracket, so - not tonight."

Yaki opened his mouth to reply then thought better of it.

"That's better, achi!" one of the vendors called out. "If I talked to my sister like that, she'd've made dinner out of my nuts instead of the ox's!"

"He doesn't have a sister!" Ziva called back, at which everyone and anyone in hearing range burst with laughter.

Yaki heaved a long-suffering sigh, and said nothing.

 

* * *

 

_19:50; Azor_

"Ziva, you shouldn't have,"[ Ehud](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/6QmIYWnjhsM/maxresdefault.jpg) chided as Ziva stepped through the door with a wine bottle in hand.

"Fine, next time I won't. But it's the first time I'm here for dinner."

"Fine, I'll ignore it just this once. Now c'mere," he gestured, "give me a kiss."

"Your wife is in the other room," Ziva laughed, but she did lean in to kiss Ehud on each cheek.

"If you're as hot as I heard you are, my only complaint is if you won't let me join in the fun!" Nurit called out from the kitchen.

"I'm sure he says that about all the girls!" Ziva called back. Then she caught sight of the dinner table. "Are we expecting a small army?"

"Yes, you," Ehud promptly replied. "Sa'ar's been doing a great job but there's still not enough meat on your bones."

"Sa'ar and Geula," Ziva corrected.

He pointed his finger at her. "A-ha! So you don't deny being too skinny?"

"I know better than to argue with a Shabaknik on his own turf," she replied.

He'd never told her that he used to be Shin-Beit but then, he didn't need to: Ziva was the daughter of an Intelligence Community man and had grown up in a town full of Community families, to say nothing of her having once been of the Community herself. She'd no doubt read that on him the first time they'd met, almost a month before. It was the first time she'd brought it out loud but then, she had no way of knowing that Sa'ar's team - and Yaki - all knew. Hell, she didn't even know they _were_ a team.

She didn't even know he and Nurit had lost their daughter.

Ehud waved his hand dismissively, and said: "I'm long retired. Now come," he added brightly, "let us find a bottle opener."

This was not the day to tell Ziva any of these things. Although if what Ehud suspected was true, she just might find out, eventually.

 

* * *

 

_21:00; Tel Aviv, Allenby St., the Pergola Club_

Bright, bubblegum pink popped at the edge of Seffi's field of vision, catching his attention: it was way too early for any of the serious clubbers. He turned his head, and immediately recognized the guy - and the woman in solid black he was standing next to.

"Shira, sister!" Seffi exclaimed as he moved forward to greet her.

Shira gracefully bent from high atop her jugular-piercing heels for the requisite hug and kisses. "What's up, Seffi, _ya ben zona_?"

"Excellent, now you're here." Seffi retreated a step and spread his arms to the sides in appreciation before stepping in again to greet Shira's husband: the bright pink button-down with black accents was hot like Ein Gedi against Liran's brown skin. This was the smartest thing Seffi has seen Liran in yet, and he absolutely was going to encourage this behavior: he'd _worked_ at getting the guy to relax enough to quit with the defensive underdressing. Sharp-dressed dark men weren't gonna catch flack on Seffi's turf, and definitely not if they were married to a Dunski. "Well, look at this hottie! What's up, _ach sheli?_ "

"Will be better with a beer."

"Well gee, I just might know where to find you one."

Liran didn't quite roll his eyes but he did react, and it was through this silent communication Seffi realized the guy on Liran's other side wasn't a random stranger, but part of their group. Seffi blinked, mind running along two tracks at once. On the first one, he tried to figure out where'd he put the "ass" in "assumption" when Shira had said there'd be twelve of them, and came up with Sa'ar's baby sister who was also Amit Goren's best friend. On the second track, Seffi took stock of the guy who was - most likely - the newest addition to the Goren-Dunski clan: tall, fair-haired, and the sort of unremarkable that - once Seffi actually _noticed_ the guy - spelled Security or HUMINT; likely the former, given the guy couldn't be older than 30 yet clearly had this act down. That meant either the guy was on the job at that very moment, or Seffi knew exactly who'd brought him home; whichever of the two options, whether the clearly-Mossad Shira needed security on her downtime now, or this was _Yael's_ new boyfriend, it was probably safer for Seffi to back away and pretend he'd noticed nothing - so that was exactly what he did.

"Noy!" he called out, then clasped his hands together in front of his chest. "Yalla, guys: I love you, but I got a whole club to look after, so Noy here," the woman popped at his shoulder with impeccable timing, "will take very good care of you. See y'all later, all right?"

"You bet," Shira replied with a gracious smile that nevertheless meant, in translation from Shira Dunski to Hebrew, _I'd rather not shoot you, so how about you don't_.

Seffi bowed his head over his still-clasped hands, and made his retreat.

 

* * *

 

_21:05_

If he had to have run into anyone of Yael's family in the parking lot, Noam figured he was lucky it was Shira and her husband. Yael had drawn her family tree for him and sketched her cousins and brother out in words. Shira was two years younger than Yael, a paramedic and Mossad, and often hung out with Shai; her husband was a high school teacher, working on the wrong side of Tel Aviv. The combination of details that Yael chose to draw out told Noam that by _Mossad_ , Yael emphatically did not mean an analyst or anything else desk-bound. If you didn't know what to look for, Shira looked like any other woman clubber in black and high heels. Noam did know what to look for, though, and he knew Shira wore that as deliberately as an infantryman wore grease paint. He also had enough manners - and enough self-preservation - to ignore that and roll with whatever conversation Shira and Liran offered.

That Shira made conversation flow easily was part the reason that Noam was glad it was her and her husband he'd run into. The other part was that Shira and Liran, Yael had made clear, were not going to push. Yael letting someone she dated meet her family was apparently notable, and she was clearly concerned they'd dogpile him. Shira and her older sister Aya, Yael was reasonably sure wouldn't push; Danielle - next younger after Shira - was more likely to focus on her baby sister, whose draft party this was; and Zvi, Shai and Amit were where Yael expected trouble to come from. It did not escape Noam's notice that Yael either didn't know how her younger brother Omer would react, or else didn't want to draw that out. He wasn't sure what that meant, but it made him wary anyhow.

He got lucky again: the next person to show up was Yael. He didn't recognize her walking across the floor, not until she almost reached their table. He was too used to seeing her in the sort of clothes she wore to work, which - he was pretty sure - were chosen to hide the lines of her body. The blouse and pencil skirt she wore now did the exact opposite. Noam felt heat creeping up in his cheeks, and was glad for the relative darkness of the club.

Shira and he both got up to greet Yael; Liran remained seated, and merely raised his arm to wave hello. He and Shira sat closer to the floor than Noam did, and so Shira got to greet Yael first. Noam used that moment to try and calm his racing heart. This was really happening: he was at a family function with Yael, after nearly a year he spent certain he'd never have her.

Shira's hand lingered one more moment against Yael's upper arm, then Shira turned to sit back down and it was Noam's turn to greet Yael. For a split second he wasn't sure what to do: it was as if they were back at their first date, but this time without Yael's skill smoothing out the uncertainties. Then she rose on tiptoe to kiss him on the lips, and his hands rose naturally to her waist. When they drew apart something had lit up in Yael's eyes, and a grin came unbidden to Noam's lips.

"Is that blouse purple?" Liran asked. "That has to be the first time I see you in an actual colour, Yael."

Shira shoved him gently. "Oh my god, Liran, don't embarrass her."

Liran raised his arms in mock surrender.

"I'll survive," Yael assured Shira as she and Noam sat down across from the other couple.

"And I'm flattered," Noam said and, just because he could, bent down to kiss her again.

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, 28 September, 01:30; Allenby St._

By the time the group of twelve spilled out from the Pergola, Ehud had been across the road from the club for hours. He'd driven out to Tel Aviv as soon as Ziva had left, and had been laying in ambush since.

There was no mistaking that this was the party he'd been waiting for. Four of the women in the group looked like sisters. Of these, one was clearly a teenager. That was Amit, the reason Ehud even knew when and where this party was. Of the three other women, one was the reason Ehud was there: one was the women he'd known as Captain Maya.

It's been a decade since he'd worked with Captain Maya. He hadn't thought of her in years. But then Sa'ar's baby sister brought the Goren girl home, and Ehud had just barely managed to not stare. Still, it needn't have mattered - except then Eli David's daughter turned up on Sa'ar's doorstep, fresh from the jungles of Central Africa.

Eli David had supposedly died of a heart attack. But the identity and previous post of the Director of the Mossad were public knowledge nowadays, and anyone who knew anything about something knew that Orly Elbaz had no business receiving that promotion, not unless something truly exceptional had happened. Ehud had successfully put that out of his mind until Ziva David turned up, brought there by a man who retained his Community connections.

Ehud had been a HUMINT officer long enough to know what was plausibly a chance, and what smacked of some machinations. And with a Goren-Dunski girl all but stationed in Sa'ar's household and Naomi Goren holding the post that she did, Ehud couldn't avoid thinking of Captain Maya.

Which of the three women was she?

He could be wrong, of course. If he was wrong then none of these people but the pre-draft girl had any reason to know what he looked like now, and nothing would happen. If he was right, though, then he was about to get noticed. Hell, if he was right, then Captain Maya was waiting for him to turn up: she was too thorough, too damned _good_ to have not accounted for him in her plans.

The woman in black and the blond man both noticed Ehud at about the same time. The woman in a purple blouse began to turn around even before the woman in black reached up to touch her shoulder. Then the woman in the purple blouse's eyes connected with his, and Ehud knew: this was Captain Maya, and she recognized him.

Ehud stepped out of the lamplight and into the shadow. It was no coincidence that Ziva David came into Sa'ar's and the team's lives. Ehud had a fair idea what Captain Maya intended to achieve with that.

And he wasn't going to get in her way.

 


	3. The Hunger

_ "You're the victim, or the hunter  
Feed the hunger, Who survives?" _

-[ Urge To Be Violent](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SagK487Fd-U), Balkan Beat Box

 

* * *

 

_Saturday, September 28, 10:30; Kochav Yair_

The street was predictably quiet when Yael exited the car. The only sound audible was birdsong. Yael paused for a moment, soaking up the atmosphere of her childhood town, then activated the car alarm and walked the short distance towards where a telltale dark Skoda was parked by an ordinary garden gate. There was no visible Security stationed outside the house; no point drawing attention to this house, not with the number of Security already posted to this town.

Yael hit the button on the intercom and waited. A second later the lock buzzed, letting her in. She didn't bother to walk up to the front door but rather let herself in through the French doors, which had been left open, tempting a breeze into the house.

A man stepped out of the kitchen to meet Yael. Tal Dunski was lean and of average height, his hair only beginning to thin. He and his daughter bore a striking resemblance, both in their features and in the sense of waiting stillness that hung about them.

By the time they parted from their ‘hello’ hug, a woman finished coming downstairs. To anyone who didn't know her, Naomi Goren was a perfectly ordinary woman in her fifties, with thick black hair running past her shoulders. Even those who knew what to look for wouldn't have given her a second glance, or seen in her one of the most powerful - and terrifying - officials in Israel. It would take that second glance to spot the one similarity in appearance between Naomi and her firstborn: the thickly-framed brown eyes.

"We weren't expecting you until closer to lunch," Tal said when his wife and daughter parted. "How was last night?" As he spoke he stepped back into the kitchen and pulled a glass out from one of the cabinets, which he put under the tap.

"Great, actually." Yael followed him into the kitchen and accepted the glass. "Amit had loads of fun. Everyone did - Aya and Udi actually stayed to the end. It was a good thing Danielle drove Shai and Omer too: I think we went through a bottle of vodka, any number of beers, and the bottle of sparkling wine that Seffi sent over."

"You're getting slow," Tal said, good-humored.

"Well, half the party was over 30, Dad. And four people were driving."

"So the party went well," Naomi said. The _And…?_ remained silent, and yet clearly evident in her voice.

"And Shai and Shira already invited Noam to go hiking next weekend," Yael admitted. "Even Zvi behaved."

"There's a first," Tal remarked.

"Tal," Naomi sighed. Then she squeezed her daughter's shoulder. "Let's go upstairs for a minute."

Tal didn't say, _I'll get a head start on lunch._ In this household there was no need for polite little lies. Naomi was running an op with her daughter; Tal knew that, and knew the op's outline, but there was no need for him to know the details. And if Yael had shown up early, then odds were _details_ had happened.

"Tamir visited last night," Yael said soon as the study's door closed behind them. It was expected that Ehud Tamir would; he was too savvy to suspect nothing.

"Took him long enough."

"We didn't exactly make it easy on him."

"Point," Naomi conceded. "Did he say anything?"

Yael shook her head. "He let me see him and retreated."

Naomi didn't say, _Then we proceed as planned._ Instead she looked at her daughter - eyes suddenly piercing - then asked: "Who else saw him?"

"Shira. And Noam."

Shira seeing Ehud Tamir wasn't a problem. She was fully read into operation _Summer Asylum_ , and knew who he was and why he would establish that contact. Noam, on the other hand, was not.

Naomi didn't ask, _How did he take it?_ Yael didn't reply, _He assumes Tamir for a threat until given reason to think otherwise._

Slowly, Naomi said: "If you want to read him in…"

"We've only been dating for a month, Mom." Yael said. She didn't say, _He knows I take extra cases._

Naomi didn't reply, _This isn't a usual one._ She didn't say, _In one month you learn what would take another person a year._ Instead she said: "I already reviewed his file. If you want to read him in, I'll authorize it."

She didn't need to say, _I trust you._

 

* * *

 

Figure 4: Neighbourhoods and locations mentioned in this chapter, from Tel Aviv Center north (top panel) and south (bottom panel). Pins: 1 - Tel Aviv Harbor, 2 - Bazel Square, 3 - Hertzliya Train Station, 4 - Carmel Market, 5 - Alleby St.'s club strip.

 

* * *

 

_11:00; Ramat HaSharon_

The plan was simple. Ziva spent the morning with Yaki and his mother, then picked up some of Geula's spare cooking - Geula _always_ cooked spares - and took a taxi to Ramat HaSharon, where Sa'ar's parents lived. It was a calculated gamble: that Nohar would've already returned to her friend Amit's, that Sa'ar wouldn't spend a moment longer with his parents than he had to, and that Ziva Schiff would be engaged with something social instead of staying at home with her sick husband. And if any of these assumptions proved false, well then: she'd just try again. It had taken her long enough to get here; another week wouldn't matter. Or rather, all it meant was that she'd have even better rapport.

All her bets proved correct, though: Shaul Schiff was home alone, and grateful for the company.

It might've been easier, Ziva reflected as they chatted in the expansive backyard, if she could dislike the man, or at least not feel sympathetic towards him - but it seemed that the cancer made Shaul genuinely reassess and regret the way he'd raised his children, and the state of his relationship with them. It was a precious opportunity that Sa'ar and Nohar had, Ziva thought, but one that they seemed utterly disinterested in. There was nothing Ziva could do about that; Yaki was already pushing that angle and if he couldn't get any traction, then there was no point for Ziva to even try.

"But enough about me," Shaul said suddenly, if not unexpectedly; he'd been venting to her about his difficulties for a while. "What about you, kiddo? Got any plans yet?"

There was something in his expression that Ziva wasn't sure how to read, so she decided to stall. "The last time I had this much free time I was in middle school," she said, laughter in her voice. "I'm still enjoying my vacation."

"At _some_ point you'll need a job again," Shaul pointed out.

The question wasn't abstract, Ziva realized suddenly. Shaul was fishing. "Are you offering, Shaul?" She asked, keeping her voice light.

Shaul, though, dropped the casual mask. He was completely serious as he said: "God knows I need _some_ one. It's been difficult, since…" He waved his hand.

None of the Schiffs - or Yaki, for that matter - were up to talking about the events of half a year prior. Ziva had had to piece together the story of Shim'on Haviv's downfall from newspaper archives. It was a hell of a story: Shaul Shiff's longtime right-hand man, Haviv had murdered two women and attempted to murder Sa'ar in the coverup. Sa'ar had been found with a bleeding head wound and a bullet in his thigh: if Yaki hadn't chosen just that time to visit, Sa'ar _would_ have been dead. The whole thing had gone down right where they were, in Shaul and Ziva Schiff's back yard. It was understandable, than, that Shaul still found it difficult to speak about.

Ziva nodded, indicating that she understood everything he meant by the one word, _since._

Shaul shook himself and continued. "And Sa'ar isn't made for business," he said crisply. "For years I tried squeezing the kid into a mold that just doesn't fit."

"What makes you think that I am, ‘made for business'?" Ziva asked, genuinely curious. She had no intention of becoming Shaul Schiff's new right-hand person, but the very fact that he offered was interesting.

"I think you'll be brilliant at whatever you want to be brilliant at," he replied, quickly enough that she knew he'd rehearsed that response in advance. "But whether you're a good fit for my company - you've been through a few things in this life. You know yourself. I'll trust your judgment. And I know," he continued, raising her voice slightly as if to override some disagreement, "that having been a US federal agent, you're no longer an Israeli citizen. I can work with that."

"I'll keep that in mind," she replied neutrally.

Shaul shook his head. "I know what you're thinking; arms dealing has a terrible reputation. But the illegal trade, that's not like the legal business at _all._ Think about - oh, you met the Mokili boys, right? They also train forces, and those forces need to buy their weapons from _someone._ "

That was some _serious_ sugar-coating of the situation, but the man knew how to spin a pitch, Ziva would give him that. He had to have rehearsed that part, too. He'd put a fair bit of thought into preparing for this conversation, particularly as: "You've known me for less than a _month_."

Shaul shrugged and smiled ruefully. "You're Eli David's girl. That's all I need to know."

That, she didn't expect to hear. It did, however, give her exactly the serve that she needed for the conversation _she_ wanted to have. Ziva let the silence stretch for a few moments, then said: "Speaking of my father."

Shaul's expression turned serious.

She continued. "He told me that there's a story I may want to ask you for, if certain circumstances were to occur."

"And you think they have."

"I think they have, yes."

It was a long moment before Shaul spoke. "I only worked with your father once. It was a joint op, Mossad and IDF, off the Algerian coast. Your father was in command of the Mossad force, and that put him in charge of the entire operation."

There Shaul paused, as if he wasn't sure how to continue. It was understandable: it was possible that he was committing an op-sec violation just by telling her that there had even been an op, and who was there. This could have been more of a problem if Ziva actually needed the whole story, but she didn't. All she needed was a reason for another person to resent her father in a way that would _last_.

And she did know her father.

"Let me guess," Ziva said slowly. "My father made a decision, and someone else disagreed."

"Basically," Shaul confirmed. He was speaking slowly, too. "It was the right decision that he made, or the decision that should've been right; protecting civilians. But it got Luria the younger killed."

It was the first specific thing that he said. Ziva latched on to it. "Luria the younger?"

"Adam, Itamar Luria's brother."

"Itamar Luria," Ziva repeated. She'd heard the names of Adam and Itamar Luria. Indeed, Itamar Luria was a household name in Israel: he was a prize-winning defense correspondent, and his younger brother was known to have received a posthumous medal on a classified operation. Ziva couldn't have been more than a baby when Adam Luria was killed. There was the old grudge that Ziva was looking for. "Did you know him, too? Or had my father?"

"Tangentially. Itamar served five years ahead of Adam. He never forgave your father, I  think." Shaul paused. His expression slowly turned to dawning horror. "They said your father died of a heart attack," he said, very carefully.

He'd done the math and realized just _why_ Ziva was asking the questions that she was - and was horrified at the ramifications. Luckily, Ziva had prepared for him piecing the truth together. "What conclusions are you drawing, Shaul?" Ziva asked, as if the conclusion he'd just drawn wasn't the entire reason she wanted to talk to him alone.

"I don't know, Ziva," he said, agitated. He was flexing his fingers, looking for something to occupy his hands with. "You're having me drag out decades-old ghosts. What am I supposed to think, that this is finished and done, all in the past?"

 _Yes,_ Ziva thought, _that's exactly what I want you to think._ It probably was what he _wanted_ to think, too; no one wanted to consider that scale of a cover-up. All she had to do was give him the beginning of a reason to reject this version of events, and likely he'll latch on to it.

She waited a moment, then said: "It was just a loose end. I'm…" She let that hang, as if she was unsure what to say. "Collecting memories, I suppose."

"Well, you gave an old man a fright," he said. His voice was still tense, but his hands finally relaxed.

"You're not old, Shaul," she replied with a smile, edging the conversation away from the previous topic.

"Well, I certainly feel old," Shaul retorted. "This damned illness… Sa'ar! Didn't expect to see you until next week!"

Ziva turned around in her chair in time to see Sa'ar shuffle down from the porch to the yard, where she and Shaul were. "Yes, well," he said awkwardly. "Am I interrupting anything?"

"Your father was offering me a job," Ziva said.

"Well, it's not like _I_ want it, so as far as I'm concerned, go for it," Sa'ar replied.

"Excellent sales pitch," Shaul said dryly.

Sa'ar just shrugged.

"Anyway…" Ziva pushed herself up.

"No, stay for lunch," Shaul said. "You brought the food."

"She can barely fry an egg," Sa'ar said sceptically.

"By your standards," she retorted.

"Ziva brought take-away from Geula," Shaul said conspiratorially.

Sa'ar perked up.

Ziva rolled her eyes, but stayed.

 

* * *

 

_12:00; Jaffa, Yaffo Aleph Qtr_

The text message Noam was staring at said simply, _Hi._

 _Hi back,_ he replied after a moment. _How are you?_

The next message he received was a photo of an elderly shepherd mix laying on a sunny patch of grass, quickly followed by the text: _Lunch at my aunt and uncle's. With my parents. You?_

 _Watching TV,_ he admitted, then added: _Whose dog?_ Because it was an easy return.

The reply was, _Uncle Yoni's._

After the night before, Noam knew that Yoni was Shai's father, and that he and his wife lived within walking distance of Yael's parents. Noam got the distinct impression that the two couples were close.

The _Yael is typing_ message at the top of the WhatsApp screen showed for a good while. Noam waited patiently. When a new text finally appeared, all it said was: _Cousins didn't bug you too much?_

Noam bit his lip, but the smile escaped anyway. Yael was clearly going to be _ridiculous_ about certain things. There was no way she didn't know exactly how he was feeling at any given moment the night before; they were literally pressed together on the couch the entire time, and Yael's people-reading skills didn't come with an off switch. And yet, she asked.

 _Your cousins are awesome,_ he replied, before a too-long wait would make his surprisingly insecure _girlfriend_ \- and it would be a while before the shine wore off the word - worry even more. He thought about it for a second, then added: _Even Zvi wasn't terrible._ Noam got the distinct sense that Zvi had been actively _trying_ to play nice; from the way everyone else responded to that, Noam got that that wasn't typical.

 _How are you?_ He asked.

 _Miraculously hangover-free,_ was the response, followed by: _You?_

 _So that's how it's going to be,_ Noam thought, then replied with a smiley sticking its tongue out. Not that he expected a genuine answer: both because figuring out how to give one over a regular channel was a headache, and - more importantly - because he doubted Yael was ready to give him one. Odds were, though, that she knew exactly what he was asking about: that man who was waiting for her outside the club.

Someone knew where Yael would be on her downtime, someone who made a point of making themselves seen, who felt _confident_ enough to do that. That looked like a clear threat and yet, Yael didn't have a dedicated security team. It made the hair on the back of Noam's neck stand to think about what that could possibly mean, particularly as Yael also didn't seem _surprised_ at that man's presence. It meant Yael knew that may happen, and yet those tasked with keeping her safe _didn't_. That made Noam think of Yael's mystery cases, the ones she got through no channel anyone in the office could identify, one of which - Noam knew - had been weighing on her since August, since Noam was still part of the Liaison Branch's security pool.

He knew when he transferred out of that pool that he'd have to get used to no longer being responsible for Yael's safety. He could deal with that: he trusted the other guys in the pool to do their job, trusted Yael to know how far she could push with each escort. This, though, was something else.

What could Yael be _possibly_ involved in?

 

* * *

 

_14:00; Tel Aviv, Tzehala Qtr_

"I have a little confession to make," Sa'ar said as soon as he stopped the car outside his house. He made no movement to get out of the car, and his shoulders were tense.

Ziva found it difficult to not tense in return. "Oh?"

"I heard the tail end of your conversation with my dad. About your dad not really dying of a heart attack. And I don't," he added, raising his voice a little to override her objection, "believe that you were just 'collecting memories'."

"Sa'ar, come on," she said. It was difficult to maintain the tone of voice she wanted: exasperated, but not angry or tense.

"Do you even realize how much speculation there was in the news about why Orly Elbaz got that promotion? _Everyone_ knows something went on there."

"The Prime Minister wanted her to owe him. That's what they say about the Chief of Police he just appointed, too."

"Itamar and Adam, that's Itamar and Adam _Luria_ ," Sa'ar said, undeterred. "Itamar never forgave your father what, exactly?"

This time, Ziva didn't bother to try and keep the anger out of her voice. "That is none of your business."

"Do you know how Zohar, Yuval, Ehud and I met?" Sa'ar asked.

"What?" The question caught her by complete surprise.

"We met at a support group, for people whose loved ones were killed. Zohar's brother, Yuval's parents, Ehud's daughter, my…" Sa'ar took a deep, gulping breath, "my fiance. All murdered. All unsolved."

 _What does that have to do with anything?_ She wanted to snap at him, except she knew exactly what. The realization was sudden and nauseating: she was not going to be able to throw Sa'ar off the trail. He already intuited too much.

Sa'ar continued. "I'm guessing you came into my house already knowing you want to talk to my dad, and what you wanted to talk to him about. I'm not angry." Something softened in his voice. "I want to know what he told you. What does Itamar Luria resent your dad for?"

It was a long, long moment before Ziva exhaled and said: "His brother's death."

Sa'ar didn't whistle, but he pursed his lips as if he was about to. He didn't say, _Hell of a grudge_ , but Ziva could read it on his face. "And you think he killed your father."

"I think he put someone else up to it." She didn't bother explaining that Bodnar had hired someone, rather than kill her father with his own hands. There was absolutely no reason for her to tell Sa'ar that.

"So we'll need proof. We'll need a trail…" He reached for his cell phone.

Ziva grabbed his wrist and twisted it. The phone clattered to the bridge between the two front seats, but Sa'ar managed to release his wrist.

"Are you insane?" She demanded. "Who were you going to call?"

"Yuval," he retorted as if it was completely obvious and he expected her to have gotten that. "I want to see if there's an electronic trail he can dig up before we send Zohar and Ehud to do legwork."

Ziva stared at him.

Sa'ar patiently waited.

 _Do you know how Zohar, Yuval, Ehud and I met?_ Sa'ar had asked. He was trying to tell her something, Ziva realized, something about the four of them. Something that had to do with all of them having lost loved ones, something that meant Sa'ar could so casually call Yuval and ask him to break any number of laws.

Something that, from Sa'ar's perspective, was so much like the mission she was on that he - "You're offering to _help?_ "

Sa'ar turned both his palms and his eyes skyward, silently but clearly communicating, **_Now_** _you get it._ "Can I call Yuval now?" he asked, frustration dripping from his voice.

Ziva hesitated for a long moment. There was little question of whether Yuval _could_ do what Sa'ar was talking about; the kid may be only 19, but he was also Sa'ar's employer, a hi-tech mogul in the making who had sold his first company before he turned 18. "No," she eventually decreed. "Now, we drive."

"To Yuval?"

"Yes, Sa'ar, to Yuval."

He turned the key in the ignition.

"Do you even realize what you're getting into?" She demanded.

Sa'ar turned his head back from the road for a second to give her a look that spoke volumes.

Ziva slumped back in her seat.

 

* * *

 

_15:15; Hertzliya, Hertzliya Pituach Qtr_

Yuval didn't ask any questions when Sa'ar and Ziva turned up on his doorstep. Or rather, having taken one look at Sa'ar's face, he asked exactly one question: _What do you need me to do?_

He also, Sa'ar was pretty sure, contacted Zohar and Ehud and told them to come over. It wasn't the sort of a thing Sa'ar needed to _tell_ Yuval to do; it was the sort of a thing Yuval tended to figure out on his own.

They could be in a world of trouble if Sa'ar read this wrong, if he read Ziva wrong. He was pretty sure that he didn't, though. He'd read violence on Ziva that very first night that she and Avi turned up at his door, something feral and desperate. Now, at least, he knew what that was: Ziva's father had not died of natural causes, and whoever was supposed to do something about it was apparently doing like the police with a murder case, and failing on the job. Moreover, this had probably been an inside job: Ziva was _very_ emphatic that Yuval was to research a potential relationship between Itamar Luria and Ilan Bodnar without searching directly for information on Bodnar.

Yuval had been on his computer since Sa'ar had Ziva had arrived. Sa'ar had spent that time in the kitchen, putting tray after tray of cookies in Yuval's expensive - and rarely-used - oven. Cookies were simple to make, yet required precision and repetitive work; they were a perfect fit for the sort of a mood that Sa'ar was in, plus they would probably come in handy when the others got there. Sa'ar had just let another person in on their secret without asking for anyone's input beforehand. Zohar, at least, was bound to be pissed with him. Cookies would not be enough, but Sa'ar figured they could only help. As for Ziva, she’d been looking over Yuval's shoulder the last Sa'ar checked, and he checked in on Yuval and her whenever he put a fresh tray in the oven.

Sa'ar had just put the last tray in the oven when Yuval came into the kitchen, followed closely by Ziva.

"Itamar Luria is _definitely_ a Bodnar family friend," he announced. "I can't tell you for certain if he'd been that even before Ilan was born, but from what I _can_ tell, the odds are pretty high. So if you wanted to know if he was someone Ilan Bodnar would trust the answer is probably, yeah."

The doorbell's ring sang through the house.

"Are we expecting anyone?" Ziva asked sharply.

Yuval looked at her as if he couldn't believe she'd just asked such a dumb question. "The rest of the team," he said, and went to answer the door.

"Zohar and Ehud," Sa'ar told Ziva.

The look she gave him was scathing. "Shall we go and greet them?" She asked.

It was Sa'ar's turn to give her that look, and point out: "There are cookies in the oven."

Ziva threw her hands up at him.

Yuval returned a few moments later, Ehud and Zohar in tow. Zohar's eyes went immediately to Ziva and yeah, Sa'ar would be hearing about this one. Ehud, though, looked at the tray left out to cool off and remarked lightly: "Cookies. Must be serious."

"Very serious," Yuval assured him.

"I'm sure Sa'ar can explain," Zohar said frostily.

"I can," Sa'ar retorted. "Ziva's father was murdered."

Ehud choked on a cookie.

Sa'ar gave him an unimpressed look. Yuval looked at Sa'ar exasperatedly, then filled a glass from the water bar and handed it to Ehud, who nodded his thanks as he accepted it.

"I seem to remember something about Ziva's father being the previous _Director of the Mossad?_ " Zohar asked. Her voice went higher than normal.

"And the person who killed him is free?" Ehud asked.

"The man who killed him is dead," Ziva said flatly. "The man who wanted him dead is free."

Yuval raised his hand. "I know the next question is how sure are we, so, the answer is - pretty sure."

Zohar opened her mouth, but Ehud got there first. "Who is this?" He asked. "He must be pretty special if he's still on the street."

"Itamar Luria," Sa'ar said.

Ehud whistled.

"The journalist?" Zohar asked. "I don't understand."

"Me neither," Yuval admitted.

"That man _collects_ other people's closet skeletons," Ehud said. "He has something on everybody. Try and take him out the long way, through the justice system…"

"…and he'll blackmail and extort his way out of it," Yuval completed. "So legally, he's untouchable."

"What I'm wondering is why no one from inside the system handled this," Sa'ar said. "I mean, if we could crack this in an afternoon - they had, what, eight months to figure it out? And don't tell me it's not done."

"I wasn't going to," Ehud assured him. "There's two things I can think of."

Before he could continue, though, Ziva spoke up suddenly. " _That's_ what you do," she said. "You kill people."

"I thought you told her!" Yuval protested, at the same time that Zohar said " _What?_ " and Sa'ar demanded: "And what were _you_ going to do? Turn him in?" He continued. "I don't think so." He was trying very hard to focus on Ziva, and ignore the furious glare that Zohar was giving him.

"I don't need your _help_ ," Ziva snarled, and turned on her heel.

"Chief Superintendent Tami Neumann," Ehud called out after her.

"Who's she and why should I give a fuck?" Ziva asked without turning back.

"The Special Investigations team leader whose team will be called in to decide if there was foul play, given Luria is a high-profile target," Ehud replied. "Who has an axe to grind with the Establishment, and who will kick up one _hell_ of a fuss if she thinks the killer came from within the system. You see, either way, she'd know it was murder. The only question is whether she'll fight it when the Shin-Beit claims op-sec considerations, and comes in to take her case."

"You're saying Neumann's the reason Luria's still alive," Sa'ar said slowly.

Ziva turned back around. Her face was still set in cold fury but, Sa'ar thought, the fury probably wasn't at _them -_ unlike Zohar, who was definitely going to give him an earful later, despite Ehud backing his play.

"Wait, if you haven’t told her, then you haven’t asked her, either," Yuval blurted out.

"Ask me what?" Ziva snapped.

"If you want us to do it," Sa'ar replied. "We don't act without permission from next of kin."

"And you ask that of all the people you help," Ziva stated, making it a half-question.

"Usually not face to face," Sa'ar admitted.

"Usually," Zohar said icily.

Ziva looked between her and Sa'ar, then remarked: "I'm glad to hear you're not _usually_ this reckless."

"Is that a yes or a no?" Sa'ar asked irritably.

For several long moments, the only sound was everyone's breathing, and Ehud munching on another cookie. Then Ziva said: "Fine. Yes."


	4. A Dream Must Turn

_"Traffic light, another turn, flat is on the second floor  
Up the stairs that creak with rust, a dream must turn to ash and dust."_

-[ It's Autumn Now](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPZiIjxbT3c), T-Slam

 

_Saturday, September 28, 20:00; Hertzliya, Hertzliya Pituach Qtr_

Zohar and Sa'ar disappeared soon as the entire group was done hashing out the plan for the next day. In all likelihood these two were about to have a fight, so Ziva appreciated that they took it to a polite distance.

Yuval produced a bottle of whiskey from the bar as if expected that to be the main pastime until his _teammates_ would return. He was mistaken: Ehud took only a finger of drink and no more, and Ziva had other plans. Dinner was only second on that list; first, Ziva needed to sort out where she'd be staying the night.

She'd stayed with Sa'ar for almost a week after she returned to Israel; then she'd found a sublet for the Holidays. The residents of that place would be returning that night, though, and the next sublet Ziva had lined up wouldn't become available until Monday. Originally Ziva was going to head back to Sa'ar's for these two nights, but given the day's unpredictable revelations -

Ziva could use some air.

Luckily, Yuval lived in _Pituach._ Ziva had a choice of hotels, most of them within walking distance of Yuval's house if she wanted the exercise; the night was pleasant enough. She even had all of her relevant possessions packed up and in Sa'ar's car.

With that sorted out, Ziva went into the kitchen. Yuval preferred to buy most of his food prepared, but she managed to locate eggs, bread and cream cheese - the makings of a sandwich. Or - she realized a few moments later, when Yuval and Ehud followed her into the kitchen - the makings of three sandwiches. Ehud proceeded to make himself useful and spread the cheese on the bread and cut vegetables while Ziva fried the eggs.

By the time they were done preparing the food, Ziva's anger long faded. It was childish of her, really, to react with anger to being taken by surprise. There was nothing to do about that but move on, though.

By the time Sa'ar and Zohar returned, the dishwasher was already loaded and Ziva, Ehud and Yuval had moved on to coffee.

"There's still salad," Ehud offered.

Sa'ar huffed, and went into the kitchen without saying a word.

Zohar rolled her eyes at his back.

"You guys okay?" Yuval asked.

"Of course we are," Zohar replied. "And don't bother checking your cameras, we were in the car."

That was right; Yuval had his entire place wired. " _Please_ tell me you don't keep records of…" Ziva started.

The other three all gave her looks.

Ziva raised her hands to the sides, as if saying, _I was just asking._

Zohar, predictably, rolled her eyes.

 

* * *

 

_Sunday, 29 September, 10:45; Ben Gurion Airport_

Yael wasn't there.

Tony slowed down to a crawl. He didn't worry about it seeming out of place and catching anyone's attention; he'd just stepped out of the sliding doors into Ben Gurion Airport's Arrivals Hall, and his pace wasn't all that different from any of the other arrivals, many of whom were searching the crowd for the faces of those waiting for them. So was Tony, for that matter - except Yael _wasn't there._

It never occurred to him Yael won't move to intercept him before he'd left Ben Gurion. In truth, he expected her - or some minion - to fish him out of the passport control queue. Instead, Tony found himself buying coffee slushie at the overpriced kiosk and scanning the hall again, just to make sure. He'd made any number of expertly surreptitious civvie-dressed Security, both men and women, but Yael just wasn't _there._

Well - Tony may have not reserved a car, but he did reserve a hotel room. A taxi would be the quickest way to get to Tel Aviv: it was late morning, and traffic should be light. On the other hand -

\- on the other hand, Tony couldn't remember when last he'd been a tourist. He should savour the opportunity. Plus, he's worked with an Israeli woman for years, had met other Israelis, had been to Israel before - twice - and yet it occurred to him, as he sat on the plastic chair and slurped his coffee with his legs stretched forward, that he'd never really known Israelis, actual _civilian_ Israelis. He could carry a simple conversation in Hebrew, had read the history - at least the summary of it - but he didn't know where Ziva was _from_ , had never had the chance to learn.

Never had the chance _before_ , Tony corrected himself. Mind made up, Tony stood, picked the handle of his suitcase, and followed the signs carrying the international sign for _Train_.

 

* * *

**Figure 5:** Neighbourhoods and locations mentioned in this chapter, from Tel Aviv Center north (top panel) and south (bottom panel). Pins: 1 - Tel Aviv Harbor, 2 - Bazel Square, 3 - Hertzliya Train Station, 4 - Carmel Market, 5 - Alleby St.'s club strip, 6 - Cinema Hotel.

* * *

 

_12:30; Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv Qtr_

Shira found a parking spot and the outside security at about the same time. She parked the car, located the neatly-concealed security camera, and positioned herself where both the camera and the two guys playing backgammon at the kiosk will have a good line of sight on her. Then she pulled out her phone.

Yael answered on the second ring.

"Did you order delivery?" Shira quipped.

"I don't know," Yael said, a hint of humor in her voice, "did I?"

"Sushi from Akiko," Shira promised. Akiko's was only a few blocks away from the Liaison building, _and_ did delivery; Yael could have some of the best sushi in Israel every day if she wanted, but Shira was fairly sure that only happened when Yael had someone in the office who she wanted to cheer up.

"You spoil me," Yael said.

"Junk food you'll eat on your own," Shira pointed out. She was mildly surprised that Yael didn't complain about the lack of fries. "Now come downstairs already, the backgammon players at the kiosk are looking at me funny."

Yael managed to not make a single sound of amusement in response to that. "All right, I'm coming," she said. "Yalla." Then the call disconnected.

Shira pocketed her phone, and waited.

Ordinarily, relatives showing up at one's work would get one in trouble, if one worked at a classified location. That wasn't going to happen to Yael, and not just because she was the most senior person in this particular building. _Everyone_ knew that Yael was the daughter of a Shin-Beit officer, and it was common enough knowledge that all Dunskis but Tal and his daughter were Mossad. Yael's relatives could find the location of where she worked without her telling them and even if she had, they had the clearance to know. That was the reason Shira made herself easily visible to security: she wasn't as unnervingly similar to her Aunt Ilana as Yael and Amit were, but she was similar enough to pass for a sister to either of her cousins.

Yael stepped out of the building, and Shira lifted the paper bags by way of a greeting.

"There's a picnic table on the other side of the building," Yael said.

Shira nodded, and followed Yael around the building and to said table. The only building from which there was a line of sight on it was the Liaison building. "Place clean?" She asked despite knowing what the answer will be. She placed the paper bag on the table and started pulling out plastic takeaway trays.

"Regularly swept," Yael confirmed.

Shira waited until they were about halfway done with their food before she asked: "How are we doing?"

Yael didn't bother to comment on how obvious and so needless the question was. Or rather, she didn't bother to _verbally_ comment. Her tone of voice as she said "We proceed as planned" was so perfectly bland it was inimitable. Coming from Yael, the tone of voice was as intentional as her words.

Shira gave her cousin the kind of a Look that that tone of voice deserved.

Yael just ate another maki.

Looked at the way Yael usually looked at those things, the answer she gave Shira was an obvious one: had Aunt Naomi's verdict been anything else, she or Yael could've - would've - contacted Shira over the weekend. That was the advantage of keeping _Summer Asylum_ in the family: it made it remarkably easy to meet in person without drawing attention. Given just what _Summer Asylum_ was supposed to achieve, it was better it'd leave no traces.

Shira didn't look at things the way Yael did, though. Her world wasn't Yael's; the threats were different. Yael knew that, and that made the tone of voice she chose a form of snark. Shira wasn't angry or insulted over that - it would be petty and besides, any semblance of humor from Yael was to be encouraged. But she wasn't going to leave that uncommented upon.

Besides which, Aunt Naomi deciding that they didn't need to abort of change _wasn't_ a given. Tamir had made his move in public. Shira was sufficiently sure none of the passersby had noticed anything; some of their party had, but _they_ would take their cue from Yael and Shira, even without knowing that the two were on the same op; and the only one Shira was sure had noticed Tamir himself was Noam, who would draw his own conclusions.

"I was asking about Noam," Shira told Yael, who looked at her for a split second too long before she replied:

"You realize the same answer applies."

Shira wasn't sure whether that was an intentional deflection or an attempt at humor. Either way, the same response was appropriate: Shira picked one of the fish-shaped miniature soy sauce bottles and tossed it at Yael's head.

Yael failed to catch it in time but, true to form, somehow managed to retain her dignity despite being hit in the face with a plastic fish.

"Mom offered to have him read in," she said, before Shira could say _And now seriously._

Shira didn't blink, but she was fairly sure her eyes widened.

Noam and Yael have been dating for a _month._ Regulation was that one's partner had to be eligible for the same clearance as one, but under ordinary circumstances, no one would bother reviewing Noam's file so early. Given the circumstances it wasn't _much_ of a surprise that Aunt Naomi decided to do that early and personally, but the offer to have Noam read in was still… unusual.

For starters, Noam would have to be read into the larger case of which _Summer Asylum_ was part. That meant being read into the truth of Eli David's death. Then there were the specifics of _Summer Asylum_ , the ones that made Aunt Naomi so damn careful about this one, so much so that - best Shira knew - not even Aunt Ilana and Uncle Yoni were fully read in: Itamar Luria had to be removed, but this being _sanctioned_ had to be the best kept of secrets. That was the advantage of going with Yael's plan, which _Summer Asylum_ was. If everything worked out the way Yael thought it would, then there would be no trace linking Itamar Luria's death to anyone within the Community.

And if it didn't, then Shira would become necessary.

Aunt Naomi giving Yael a _choice_ on reading Noam in could mean one of two things. Either Aunt Naomi decided that Noam was trustworthy with these secrets, or she decided that Yael was the better judge of that. Shira had no idea which was the more likely; she wasn't sure if Yael had an opinion on that, either. Not that it mattered much: Yael would make up her mind regardless. Or, more precisely - Shira thought as she eyed Yael carefully - Yael would say _no_ either way: reading Noam in at this stage wasn't the done thing, and so Yael wouldn't do it.

Shira _could_ leave it at that, but - had Yael already decided to not read Noam in, Shira would've had to pry it out of her that that was even an option. That Yael volunteered the information indicated that Yael wasn't yet decided. So Shira could let Yael return to her mother with that answer, or she could trust Aunt Naomi's judgment in making this a _question_ , and push.

Shira gave herself a moment to lament that making this Zvi's problem to solve wasn't an option, then asked: "Do you want to?"

Yael actually seemed to think it over for a second before she replied: "If you thought I didn't, you wouldn't have asked."

Shira scanned the table for something else to throw at Yael, then covered half her face with her hand. "Yael," she said, with elaborate patience, "your mom has _never in her life_ done anything because it was the nice thing to do. If she's letting you choose, then you _get_ to choose."

And that - Shira thought as something shifted in Yael's face, the expressionlessness becoming deeper, as if Yael withdrew from her own skin somehow - was something that Yael might have little experience handling. Shira chose to be Kidon, and had had years of training to think of her choices; in contrast, Yael had been thrown head-first into the HUMINT world when she was 19, and never stepped back or took a break from it. Yael grew up in the world where Necessity ruled in a way Shira could only partially grasp. It was part of what made Yael so exquisitely good at the job, but it was not without its price.

For a while, the only sounds were the whisper of the wind in the trees and the twittering of the birds. Then, moving at almost the exact same moment, Shira and Yael resumed eating. Yael wasn't going to answer Shira's question any time soon, and Shira wasn't going to push too hard; they both knew these things. They also both knew that Yael had as good as admitted the answer to Shira's question, _Do you want to?_

That made the real question, what would Yael _do._

 

* * *

 

_14:00; Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv Gimel Qtr_

Yaki stood and watched the scene, his fingers itching for a smoke he wasn't going to get for a while; he won't be moving from the scene until the techs were done processing it. Which was going to be a few hours: Israel Police believed in clearing the scene and allowing ordinary life to resume as soon as possible. Not, Yaki privately thought, that the stairway of this swanky residential building saw much use. It would've taken them a lot longer to find the body if not for a young and curious German Shepherd who'd slipped his leash; it was entirely possible that, other than the janitor, Itamar Luria was the only person who ever used the stairway - and he won't be using it any more.

The chatter of the techs filled the stairway, echoing off the reinforced walls. Another team was upstairs, going through Luria's apartment; Tzaga was with them. Rosenberg took his interview of the dogwalker who found the body back to the apartment of the people whose dog she was walking. That left Neumann and Yaki, standing at opposite ends of the scene, watching quietly.

Yaki didn't need to ask to know that his boss would be ordering an autopsy. People fell down the stairs every day, but it was rare for someone to actually _die_ from it. Even the regular homicide squad had that much sense - or rather, they had the sense to turn around and hand the case over to Special Investigations soon as they IDed the victim.

Because it had to be a dead fucking _journalist._ A dead _high-profile_ journalist. Who lived at a very expensive address, which he probably couldn't afford on his paycheck. Of course, they'd only need to look into _that_ if this turned out to indeed be a homicide. It would be days before they had the autopsy results; in the meantime all Yaki had was intuition, his and his teammates'. But Yaki didn't need to make eye contact with Neumann to know her intuition was saying the same thing that his did: that Itamar Luria had been murdered.

It didn't look like a hired kill; contract killers didn't usually bother to fake an accident. They were a lot more likely to strap a bomb to the intended victim's car. Whoever had killed Luria knew what they were doing, though: this wasn't their first kill, and so far it seemed they didn't leave any evidence behind. Yaki knew what this looked like, and he didn't like that at fucking _all._

Neumann made her way to where he was standing. "Think it may be your guy?"

"Could be," Yaki allowed.

Seven months prior, Yaki found a pattern: a string of homicides made to look like accidents, connected by a single thread. In each of the cases, _someone_ was involved who used the names of Israel's 1970's Football World Championship team members. Yaki's then-boss wasn't particularly impressed, but Neumann was; that was how Yaki earned the lateral promotion to her team.

When Yaki pushed for his findings to be recognized he hadn't known that the person using the aliases he IDed was a coworker of Sa'ar's, and that the killer _was_ Sa'ar. He definitely hadn't known that one of Sa'ar's earliest kills was the man who'd killed Yaki's father and put his mother in a wheelchair - or that his mother was implicated, having okayed the murder.

Itamar Luria's death fit Sa'ar's MO. Sa'ar liked faking accidents and - more rarely - suicides. He'd've had to know that Itamar Luria took the stairs, but that was easy to find out: Yaki had found that out within two minutes of looking Luria up on his cell phone. Next, Sa'ar would've needed to get into the building unseen, so he could lay in wait in the stairway; the building had an intercom system and a manned lobby, but it _also_ had an underground parking with an electronic lock. Yaki was fairly sure that hacking that was within the skill set of Sa'ar's crew.

Yes, this looked like one of Sa'ar's kills, and Neumann reached that conclusion just like Yaki had.

"We never did figure out how the 1970 World Cup killer chooses his victims, though," he said.

Neumann nodded. "Got a number of possible motives here. First," she gestured towards the building around them, "there's all this. Then there's his job."

"He might've known something," Yaki agreed. "He might've sold what he knew. Would explain," and he imitated Neumann's gesture, "all this."

"We'll find that out if the Shin-Beit descends to take the case," Neumann said factually. "At least it doesn't look like they'd be covering something up."

Yaki nodded. Pushing someone down the stairs or entering a scuffle with them weren't the most efficient way of killing someone. Someone who was actually, properly _trained_ for this - and had an entire system backing them up with resources - would've probably done things differently.

"Got a favorite theory?" he asked.

Neumann exhaled loudly. "None of them. All our options are shit."

"Yeah," Yaki agreed. "They are."

 

* * *

 

_19:00; Tel Aviv, Dizengoff St._

All Tony intended to do was rest his eyes for a few minutes. Instead, he woke up at seven in the evening, hungrier than he'd been in a while and with a raging headache. Luckily he had Tylenol on him, and didn't need to venture out in search of an Israeli pharmacy. Next came a shower. Then, feeling that much more human, he went out to find some dinner.

The[ Cinema Hotel](http://www.atlas.co.il/cinema-hotel-tel-aviv-israel?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIl6eI7tri2gIVV_hRCh2AOwImEAAYASAAEgLVGPD_BwE) was located in a different area of Tel Aviv than the chain hotel they'd stayed at on his last visit to Israel, in[ May 2011](http://archiveofourown.org/works/207620). The aerial distance was probably no more than a mile, but Tony had no intention of trying to find his way on foot. He didn't need to, either: Dizengoff Street was packed full of all kinds of eateries. Within the first hundred yards Tony already passed by any number of bars, restaurants, and little cafes which - being Israeli - offered sandwiches, vegetarian pasta dishes and very generous salads.  Tony seriously considered sitting down in the first cafe he could find that could fit a single person inside, where there was air-conditioning - the heat did not abate despite the hour - when he found something much better: an Italian restaurant that looked like it might actually know what it was doing. Even better, the sign declared Piazza to also be a wine bar.

Dinner soothed Tony more than he expected it to, but that was a mixed blessing. It made him all too aware of the itch under his skin, which made him seriously reconsider his decision to just be a tourist. He could call McGee and ask for Anat's phone number, then call her and set up dinner the next day or something; Anat would have to report the contact, which was _bound_ to put Tony on Yael's radar, on the off chance that she missed his arrival and wasn't deliberately ignoring him. Eventually, though, Tony dismissed the idea: Anat was also likely to figure out _what_ \- or rather, who - brought Tony to Israel. She wouldn't appreciate being used, and besides - odds were Yael was ignoring Tony on purpose.

Had she thought he wouldn't figure it out? Had she given him the information about Ziva being in the Central African Republic thinking he wouldn't put the rest of it together, or had she factored that in and was deliberately letting him hang? It was a nice thought, that he might have caught her by surprise by arriving in Israel, but Tony was wary of buying into it. He figured that if he was lucky - if - then Yael was ignoring him simply because she had no use for him. That was unpalatable, but better than the third alternative: that Yael knowingly put him on the track to arrive in Israel, that his presence there was necessary for whatever plan she had going.

While Tony was eating - and thinking - it got dark out. He wondered if the heat broke, and how much that mattered; odds were that even if it did, the temperature would still be in the 70s. He signaled to the waitress that he wanted the bill and waited for it, wishing he still had a fork or some other utensil to fiddle with; the itch under his skin was getting worse. He paid the bill, left the waitress what he hoped was an decent tip, and ventured back out to the street. At least he wasn't wrong about the temperature, he figured.

Everything else remained to be seen.

 

* * *

 

_19:45; Tel Aviv, Tzahala Qtr_

Ziva was in the basement gym when the yelling started; or, if not quite yelling, then markedly raised voices. Ziva shut the treadmill down, grabbed her towel and headed upstairs. Both raised voices were male: if this was to be anything like the fight Sa'ar and Yaki had had on Kippur Eve then Zohar and Ziva would need to either order out or _go_ out.

Halfway up the stairs the voices coalesced into words, and Ziva started leaping two stairs at once.

"…told me."

"I thought you didn't want to know."

"Well I do when I'm going to be called to the fucking scene!"

Ziva had wondered how did Sa'ar and Zohar lived, keeping such a major secret from someone the both clearly loved. This was the answer to that question: Yaki clearly knew, at least the crux of it if not the details. More than that: either Ehud's prediction had been wrong, or…

"How was I supposed to know it'll be your team?"

"Don't play dumb with me. You knew _exactly_ who you're going after, and _exactly_ what that means."

…or Yaki was on Chief Superintendent Neumann's team. Ziva couldn't decide if that lessened or increased the risk to the team.

"Well trust me when I say you'd have wanted this one taken out too."

"I don't want to know, Sa'ar!"

"Do you or don't you? Decide already!"

Yaki didn't reply to that; he just spotted Ziva coming in from the stairs, and was staring at her, clearly calculating just what she might've heard and what she might've understood.

He and Sa'ar were standing nose-to-nose in the kitchen. Zohar, who had been cooking with Sa'ar when Ziva had gone downstairs, was nowhere to be seen.

Sa'ar twisted his head to see what Yaki was looking at, then turned back around and said, infuriatingly calm: "It's fine, she knows."

Yaki stared at him as if he thought Sa'ar couldn't have made a stupider declaration. "Nothing about this is 'fine'!"

Footsteps down the stairs announced Zohar's return. She was dressed in a glittery top over black trousers, and carrying a purse.

Conflicting emotions warred across Yaki's expression.

Zohar pointedly ignored both him and Sa'ar as she made eye contact with Ziva and said: "I'm going out. Coming?"

Ziva only hesitated for a split second. She needed to know who knew exactly _what_ but Zohar could likely supply that information, and Ziva had no intention of sticking around for - and likely participating in - the yelling match if she didn't absolutely have to.

"Give me five," she said.

Zohar nodded once, tersely. "I'll be in the car."

Ziva didn't bother to shower. She helped herself to a pack of wet wipes, refreshed her deodorant, then put on her one pair of khakis and the nicest shirt she had, which was as close as she could get to the way Zohar was dressed.

By the time Ziva was out the gate it's been seven minute rather than five, but Zohar was still waiting in the car, engine off and the passenger side door left open to let the night air in.

Ziva sat down, closed the door and said: "Sa'ar killed whoever had killed Yaki's father. Really," she added in response to the expression on Zohar's face, "you thought I wouldn't figure that out?"

"Didn't actually think about it," Zohar admitted.

"Did he okay it?" Ziva asked.

"His mother did. Yaki only found out about all this about half a year ago," Zohar said.

"Wasn't that around the time that…"

"That _we_ happened, yeah."

"I was going to say, that Yaki killed Shim'on Haviv."

Zohar was silent for a second, then said: "Actually, that was _exactly_ when."

That implied all sorts of things that Ziva didn't care to think about in the moment. Instead, she continued with: " _And_ he's on Neumann's team?"

Zohar turned her palms skyward and tipped her face up in a quintessential _What can we do?_ gesture.

Ziva leveled a Look at her. Zohar didn't waver, So Ziva leaned back against the seat and asked: "Where are we going?"

Zohar started the car. "The Pergola. We'll probably get the first round free once Seffi hears the boys are fighting _again._ They served together," she explained in response to Ziva's look. "He has Opinions."

" _You'll_ get the first round free," Ziva corrected. "I'll be driving on the way back."

"Excellent. I was hoping you'd say that."

 

* * *

 

_20:10; Tel Aviv, Allenby St._

Even in Tel Aviv, Sunday night wasn't party night. They parked the car at the lot on the corner of Allenby and Ben Yehuda, and walked up Allenby to the Pergola. There, they ordered their drinks and fries at the bar then found themselves a table for two.

Seffi showed up at their table a few minutes later, carrying their drinks and a small bowl of salted peanuts and pretzels; their fries would take a while more. "There you go," he said as he put the drinks and bowl down. "As much as I'm happy to see you lovely ladies, do I _want_ to know why you're gracing me with your presence on a weekday night?"

Zohar gave him a meaningful look. "You can probably guess."

Seffi made a face. "Right. Chaser of vodka?"

"Please," Zohar said emphatically.

Ziva shook her head and raised her hand in an _I'm good_ gesture.

"Right," Seffi said briskly. "Be right back."

He indeed returned a moment later, carrying two chasers - one each for Zohar and himself. The two of them clinked the miniature glasses. "To our favorite idiots," he said.

"May they get less idiotic," Zohar added.

"Amen," Seffi agreed.

Then they emptied their glasses; Ziva took a sympathetic sip from her coke.

"Right," Seffi said. "By the way, I can't _believe_ you missed the party of the year."

Zohar straightened up. "Amit's enlistment party? Was it good?"

"The vodka flowed like water," Seffi promised. "But that wasn't the big deal. I think the entire clan showed up, at least this generation of it."

"Gorens or Dunskis?" Zohar asked.

"Both," Seffi replied.

Ziva grabbed the table's edge. Her blood ran cold, and her ears buzzed. Either of these names could be a coincidence, but both of them? No. There was a cousin of Yael's born when she and Ziva were about fourteen; she would be about army age now . There was a female cousin a couple years younger than they, too, though Ziva didn't trust her memory on that cousin's name; maybe it was Shira - the name of Amit’s cousin that Sa’ar would occasionally mention - and maybe it wasn't.

Zohar leaned forward. "Are you okay?" She asked Ziva, concerned.

"Yael?" Ziva asked.

Seffi gave her a strange look. "Yeah, Amit has a cousin called that. How did you know?"

"I knew her," Ziva heard herself say. Her mind was running a hundred miles per second. It didn't have to mean anything, she knew; Amit was a pre-draft girl. It was entirely possible she _wasn't_ as dangerous as Yael was at her age. Shira, though - suddenly, Ziva remembered why _Shira Dunski_ rang familiar. She was Mossad Ops; word was - last Ziva hung out in the relevant circles - that she'd make Kidon.

"Ziva?" Zohar asked. "You don't look so well."

"I'll get you water," Seffi said, then hurriedly made himself scarce.

 _We have to go back, we could all be in danger,_ Ziva almost said as soon as he was gone. She didn't, though. She didn't know how to explain what she instinctively grasped: that there were too many coincidences involved, that even if Shira running into Nohar was pure chance, even if the Mokili team being on the same trail as Ziva was, Ziva ending up on Sa'ar's doorstep was not. Somewhere in between these points in time Yael had tweaked things - and if Yael hadn't, then her mother had.

"Ziva, seriously, are you okay?" Zohar asked again. She chewed her lip, then added: "Are _we_ okay?"

"I don't know," Ziva said slowly. "Probably, to the latter." If Yael had indeed set Ziva on the path to Shaul Schiff then odds were Zohar and the rest of her team, specifically, were safe. They were too useful to be discarded after one job.

"How close were you?" Zohar asked.

There was something to the way she said _close._ It took Ziva a moment to decipher that. Then she shook her head. "Not like that."

"But you were close."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"All right. Still saying no to vodka?"

"Yes," Ziva replied firmly. It was a tempting idea, but it was one of the very last things she needed. _Wine in, secrets out,_ as the Hebrew idiom went.

"You know, I'll take 'no' for an answer, but you better hope the boys will be still working it out when we get back," Zohar said conversationally. "Or you'll get grilled."

"Or they'll get their asses kicked, you mean," Ziva corrected.

Zohar just huffed.


	5. The Returning

_"To the desert_  
_To the waterless land_  
_We have returned, oh,_  
_To thee, my land"_

-[ To the Desert](http://labelehrecords.bandcamp.com/track/--29), Heffer/Argov, arrangement: Ginossar & Halevi

 

_20:15; Hertzliya, Hertzliya HaTze'ira_

Shira's cell phone rang, flashing a cell phone number Shira didn't recognize off the bat. She answered with a "Hello?"

"Shira? Hi, it's Seffi Kochavi, from the Pergola." He sounded nervous.

There weren't a lot of reasons for Seffi Kochavi to call her, and then there were even fewer that would justify him sounding just this side of _scared._ Shira turned her head to meet Liran's eyes and indicated with her hand that she'd be gone a moment. Then she got up from the couch, walked over to the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

She cast her voice into her upbeat usual civilian voice and said: "Hi, Seffi. What's up?"

"Something just happened that I think you should know about," he said.

"Okay," she replied. Her intonation made it mean, _Go on._

"Do you know Zohar, Sa'ar Schiff's girlfriend?"

Sa'ar's and Yaki's, from what Shira knew, but it made sense for Seffi to only name Sa'ar; him, Seffi knew for certain that she knew. This was also the probable reason that Seffi was nervous: if it involved Zohar, then Seffi had to feel as if he was betraying Sa'ar and Yaki by making this call.

Out loud, Shira said: "Yeah."

"She's here with a friend, Ziva."

The list of potential reasons for Seffi to call narrowed down to one.

"I don't know if you know her or not…" He continued.

"Yes," Shira said, "I know her."

"So, uh, I brought up Amit's party, and Zohar mentioned your last names. And Ziva, she freaked out. Specifically about Yael."

And there was the other reason - or reasons - that Seffi was spooked. He was probably worried that he'd misstepped by bringing up Amit's party - and then there was the matter of Ziva having named _Yael_ , and Seffi having good eyes for certain things.

"Thanks for the heads-up," Shira said, keeping her voice sincere but otherwise neutral. "It's good that you told me."

"Yeah," Seffi said. He didn't sound particularly convinced, but he did sound a lot less off kilter. "So, uh…"

Shira let the upbeat back into her voice. "We'll talk next time I drop by, yeah?"

"Yeah," Seffi echoed, this time sounding relieved. "Bye!"

The call terminated, but Shira didn't return to the living room, where Liran was - presumably - still watching TV. Instead, she pulled up Yael's number from the list of recent calls and hit _send_.

Yael picked up on the second ring. "What's up?"

"Seffi from the Pergola called," Shira said without preamble. "Apparently Ziva came in with Zohar, heard Amit's last name as a by-the-way, and panicked. Brought up your name." It would've been shorter to say, _Ziva knows_ , but that would've implied that there was something for Ziva _to_ know. By merely repeating Seffi's information, Shira could keep the conversation on a regular - and more readily available - line.

"How long ago?" Yael asked.

"Minutes."

"Thanks."

"Sure. Bye."

"Bye."

Shira remained sitting for another moment. It shouldn't matter that Ziva intuited Yael's involvement: the job was already done, and Ziva had nothing except guesswork. True, Ziva was a loose end, and it was better practice to not leave those hanging - but Shira didn't believe that was the only thing that drove Yael in her preparing for Ziva finding out. Neither could she think of a purely operational reason for Aunt Naomi to have okayed said preparations. _Your mom has never in her life done anything because it was the nice thing to do_ , Shira had told Yael earlier that day, but it seemed to Shira that some of Aunt Naomi's decisions only made sense if she did consider Yael's wellbeing, and decided the added risk was acceptable.

Yael so rarely acted on what she _wanted_ that it was difficult to tell when she wanted something at all. Here, though, Shira was sure: Yael had some sort of personal agenda in both _Summer Asylum_ and the larger op of which it was part. Obviously that was about Ziva but just what, exactly, Yael wanted to achieve - of that, Shira wasn't sure.

 

* * *

 

_20:50; Tel Aviv, Allenby St._

Ziva took in a big gulp of air as she left the club. The air wasn't particularly pleasant - the smell of _city_ stronger than the sea breeze - but Ziva had spent the past half-hour forcing herself to eat and to keep up conversation with Zohar, when all she wanted was something to rip in shreds. Zohar stayed in the club and would be taking a taxi home; Ziva needed to _do_ something.

Five months before, Ziva had finally caught up with Ilan Bodnar only for someone else, an unknown gunman - or woman - to get in the kill shot. Ziva and Team Gibbs never did manage to get a lead on that third party, but it wasn't difficult to guess who - or rather, _what_ \- they were: Mossad. And now, it seemed Yael had manipulated circumstances so Ziva wouldn't be the one to kill Itamar Luria, either. Ilan Bodnar's death being snatched away from her at the last minute had likely been just luck but this felt personal, and Ziva was angry.

What _did_ she want to do?

Ziva took in another deep inhale and tried to rein in her emotions enough to think past _need_ and into _want._ If all she wanted was an outlet for her anger, she could just go back to Sa'ar's; the basement gym had a punching bag. But if she wanted to do something about the situation she was in - or thought she was in - then she needed to think past the immediacy of her anger.

She started up the street, towards Jerusalem Beach; perhaps there she'd find it easier to think than surrounded by the escaped noise of Allenby's club strip.

Why was she angry? What did she resent? Was it that her prey had been snatched away from her, that she'd been manipulated into her current position, or both? More the latter than the former, Ziva decided. She'd made the choice to let Sa'ar kill Luria; she was fine with that. But she was angry at the idea that she'd been so casually routed, and then angrier that it's been _Yael._

It felt as if Ziva had never gotten out, had never gotten away; as if she'd never escaped the world that she'd tried to flee by becoming a US citizen. As if the choices she'd made didn't matter. She wanted to yell at Yael -

Ziva frowned and picked up her pace. Was that what she wanted, to stage a confrontation? Yes, if it was indeed _Yael_ behind this, Ziva decided: if this was indeed as personal as Ziva felt that it was. It was one thing if the Israeli Defense Establishment had just not given up on messing with her life: Ziva knew that she carried too much in her head to be ever quite free of that. It was infuriating and frustrating, but Ziva knew it was true. Then it was something else entirely if it was a specific _person_ , if it was Yael still -

Ziva took another deep inhale. She wasn't quite ready to tell Yael to go to hell, but yeah: she wanted to yell at her. She wanted to know if it _was_ her, or if Ziva had gotten the measure of her wrong.

Well. There was a way to arrange for _that._ Ziva had been followed since she landed at Ben Gurion; she knew that. Whoever was running the surveillance on her had done her the courtesy of putting their best on her track, but whether or not Ziva could find her tail, she knew that it existed. She could use that.

Ziva stopped in place, pulled out her cell phone and turned on the GPS. There; that was bound to register. If the person on the other end of Ziva's tail was Yael and her infuriating ability to infer just what the other person was thinking, she'd no doubt know what Ziva meant by turning her GPS on; and if this was at all personal for her, then she just might respond.

The GPS signal said, _If you want me, come and find me._

 

* * *

Figure 5: Neighbourhoods and locations mentioned in this chapter, from Tel Aviv Center north (top panel) and south (bottom panel). Pins: 1 - Tel Aviv Harbor, 2 - Bazel Square, 3 - Hertzliya Train Station, 4 - Carmel Market, 5 - Alleby St.'s club strip, 6 - Cinema Hotel, 7 - Gordon Beach, 8 - Aviv (Dolphinarium) Beach.

* * *

 

_21:05; Tel Aviv, Gordon Beach_

Tony didn't return to the hotel after dinner. He was too restless for that. Instead, he wandered about the streets until he found his way to the beach promenade then, after a brief hesitation, started up north; the lights of Jaffa seemed closer than he remembered them, which meant the strip of beach where he and Ziva hung out in 2011 was to the north rather than to the south. He wasn't sure just why he was doing this to himself, other than he needed to not be completely aimless.

He stopped where he recognized his surroundings: the hotels towering over the beach, the wide stairs leading from the beach to the plaza, even the kiosk. This was the beach he remembered. It'd changed little in two years; from what Tony knew about Tel Aviv, that was the exception rather than the rule.

He ended up standing by the waterline, staring into the dark horizon. Between the waves, the general sound of _people_ and his meandering attention, Tony almost didn't notice that there was someone coming up behind him. But only almost.

When he turned around, Yael was there.

She was wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt, her ponytail whipping in the wind. She looked the way she always did: perfectly ordinary. She closed the last few yards between them, walking at the exact same pace she had before he turned.

"Thanks for being easy to find," she said when she finally was close enough to be easily heard over the ambient noise.

"I was beginning to think you forgot about me," he said. His heart was going double-time, but he kept his tone light, teasing almost.

"Were you?" She asked.

"Figuratively speaking," he admitted.

She almost, but not quite, smiled. "Come on; let's go."

"Where are we going?" He asked. He wasn't going to go _anywhere_ with her unless he knew where they were going. From the way she was yet to move herself, she probably expected that response.

"Ziva," she said simply.

Tony followed.

It was a short walk to the car: Yael had parked in the lot under the plaza. Tony actually stopped in place at the sight of the small, bright yellow Hyundai. "Seriously?" He demanded. "Seriously." He _could_ have contained that response, but it just wasn't worth it. Better to play it casual.

Yael didn't reply verbally: she tilted her head, gave him a Look, and got in the car.

"Unbelievable," Tony said under his breath, then strode over the remaining distance and got in the car.

In the moment before Yael turned the key in the ignition, Tony got his first good look at her. The last two years hadn't been kind to her: the colour of her hair had begun to fade, and there were the beginnings of lines in her face. She wasn’t wearing makeup but then again, Tony's meager experience indicated that Israeli women often didn't.

"Where are we going?" He asked once the car started going. "Where's Ziva?"

"Another beach a couple miles south of here. She's probably very pissed off. She didn't kill anyone," Yael added, a subtle emphasis on the word _she_ indicating that someone else _had_ killed someone, "and she just found out I might've had something to do with that."

"Did you?" Tony asked, out of habit, then followed it up with: "Never mind, stupid question."

Appropriately, Yael didn't even spare him a look.

Tony leaned back against the seat and allowed himself a moment to feel relieved: _Ziva didn't kill anyone._ More than that, Yael just implied that Ziva was okay with that _until_ she found out about Yael's involvement. It was better than what he had hoped, and _so_ much better than what he expected to find. First he'd worried that Ziva was courting death in Africa; then he'd found out she was in Israel and had been so sure that the Israelis would use and discard Ziva, as they'd done before. He'd spent the past month worried that he'd read Yael wrong, that she didn't have a personal stake in keeping Ziva safe, but no: he'd been right the first time. _Ziva didn't kill anyone._ Now all that was left was to talk Ziva back home - and there was Tony, on a car ride straight to Ziva.

 _Did you know I'd come?_ Tony wondered, sneaking a look at Yael's profile. McGee had been unable to snipe Tony a plane ticket until the holidays were over. Did Yael - or, more correctly, Yael's minions - have anything to do with that? How much was chance, and how much was planned? In a way, it reminded him of the first time he'd met Yael, when she'd let him and Ziva get kidnapped: she couldn't have _known_ that would happen, but her read of the situation had been right damn _on._

It was a short drive before Yael stopped the car at the side of the road. The beach stretched to their right, lit by the floodlights that, nevertheless, left some areas shadowed. If Ziva was there, she had to be in one of the shadowed areas; he couldn't see her.

"A couple hundred yards south," Yael said. Tony turned back his head to look at her. "Figured it's better if she doesn't see you walk out of a car."

It only took Tony a second of considering what Ziva - in the mood she was probably in - would make of that to understand what Yael meant: it was better if Ziva didn't immediately grasp that he and Yael were working together. Not that Tony knew what Yael had done, beyond that it wasn't Ziva who'd killed anyone.

Tony got out of the car and shut the door behind him with hardly a backwards glance.

It was time.

 

* * *

 

_21:15; Tel Aviv, Aviv (Dolphinarium) Beach_

The southernmost beach before _Tel Aviv_ became _Jaffa_ , Aviv Beach - better known as the Dolphinarium Beach, though the Dolphinarium had been abandoned for decades - was a popular place for parties. At least it had been when Ziva was a teenager, or in her early 20s; perhaps it still was but, at least on a Sunday night, it was very nearly abandoned.

That was good: Ziva wanted a location that, though nominally public, afforded privacy. The Dolphinarium Beach was as good as she was going to get within walking distance, and she was too restless to sit in a cab. The beach itself, though empty, was also flooded with light, so Ziva went up on the breakwater and walked almost all the way to its edge. There it was relatively dark, and the crashing of the waves would cover the sounds of any conversation. And if being up there made her a little bit harder to find, then well: Ziva was waiting on Yael, and _she_ would no doubt take one look at the beach and know exactly where Ziva was waiting.

Ziva had been waiting for about ten minutes when someone arrived. It wasn't Yael, though. For a few seconds Ziva thought that Sa'ar had come after her for some reason: the approaching person was about the right size, though his gait was different. Then she recognized the man making his way to her across the rocks. It wasn't Sa'ar; it was Tony.

What was _he_ doing there?

"How did you find me?" Ziva demanded as soon as he was close enough for her to be heard.

He spread his arms to the sides. "Guess."

"McGee," she said flatly.

"Now why would you think such a thing?"

"Because I know you," she replied icily.

"It's good to see you, too," he replied.

"Spare me," she shot back. Her mind was working at double time. She was waiting on an entirely different confrontation, and she wasn't sure how Tony's presence would affect that. Would Yael turn around and leave if she saw a third party there? And if she didn't, what would Tony make of it? Ziva could chase Tony away if she wanted to, but could she do that without being cruel?

"So, how you've been?" He asked. "How's vacation?"

"Restful," she replied. It was even true about the Israeli leg of her trip, at least until the last couple of days.

"Until I showed up, huh?"

"Something like that."

"Sounds like a story."

She didn't reply.

"You keep looking over my shoulder," he remarked. "Waiting for someone?"

"Yes," Ziva admitted. "But she might not show up."

"She," Tony repeated. "Anyone I know?"

Ziva frowned. There was something in Tony's voice that she didn't like, something that sounded as if he already had an idea who that might be, and just wanted Ziva to confirm it. "Why do you ask?"

For a long moment, Tony seemed to hesitate. Then he sighed. "Because McGee figured out you're in Israel, but Yael drove me here."

Ziva took three steps forward and slapped Tony clear across his face. Then she took half a step back, breathing hard.

Tony straightened his neck slowly. "Yeah, I should've seen that one coming."

"What do you know?" Ziva demanded.

Tony was still massaging where she'd hit him. "Honestly? Nothing. Yael mentioned on the way here that you didn't kill anyone, which sounds to me like someone is dead anyway. But that's it."

"I don't believe you," she said flatly.

"Yeah, I thought you might say that," he said, a little bit grimly. "Which makes it a good thing I saw Yael turn into what I'm pretty sure is a parking lot. Want to go see if she's still there?"

Ziva narrowed her eyes. "And if she isn't there?" Yael probably would be still there; what Ziva wanted to know was whether Tony would deny having a way to contact her.

He didn't. He said: "Then I email her to tell her that you two need to talk and I won't be your middleman."

Ziva bit down on several vicious answers she did not actually want to say, then spat out: "Fine. Let's go."

She didn't need Tony’s guidance to the parking lot. Even in Tel Aviv, some things remained in place more than a year, and the lot was in the exact same place it's been the last time Ziva had been to this beach. That was, somehow, both reassuring and disorienting.

It was a small lot. Ziva scanned quickly, trying to tell the white cars from the silver in the dark, and then figure out which of the white sedans was Yael's. It took her a moment to realize that the woman who stepped out of the yellow compact was the one she was looking for.

Ziva slowed down, nearly to a stop. _Yellow_ car meant Yael wasn't there on the clock; she wasn't there as part of her job. It meant Yael interacted with Tony - an NCIS agent - on her personal time, _drove him over_ to Ziva not as his _handler_ but as a - Ziva stumbled over the thought and tried to catch her balance.

Yael was there as a private person. That was a monumental risk, even with everything Yael had going for her. It meant this _mattered_ to her, in a way that only made sense if Yael's gesture in giving Ziva that hoodie two years before was honest and true. And that, and that -

That was something Ziva hadn't actually prepared for.

 

* * *

 

_21:25_

She hadn't expected Tony and Ziva to come back for her. She wasn't sure whether Ziva would choose to return to the US or to stay in Israel, but she'd been fairly sure Ziva wouldn't want to so much as _see_ her. And yet, there they were.

Given that Ziva _was_ there, though, Yael wasn't particularly surprised at Ziva's response as she took in the car Yael had just stepped out of. Yellow, compact cars - whether Seat, Fiat or Hyundai - were plentiful in Tel Aviv, but that didn't make Yael's personal car any less aggressively civilian. Yael knew what that would look like to Ziva. The situation was a little more complicated than _off duty_ , but Yael wasn't surprised that Ziva hadn't taken that extra step.

DiNozzo was looking between Ziva and her. Yael knew that expression, too: it was the face of a person who was going to fix a thing, whether or not the thing wanted to be fixed - the "thing" being Ziva and her. That wasn't a surprise either - at least, given that Ziva was there in the parking lot.

For a split-second, Yael considered stepping forward and reaching out for her. But only for a split-second: Ziva's anger wasn't all that far from the surface, and that would end badly.

"So," DiNozzo said, his cheerfulness brittle. "I saw some perfectly good benches over the- right, no." Ziva turned her head to glare at him; Yael didn't bother. "Back to the breakwater it is. I don't know about you two but I just did a _lot_ of walking, and rocks still beat all that sand for sitting on. _Also_ all that sand is floodlit, which means you two wouldn't sit there _anyway_. So; shall we?"

There wasn't much of a question, as Yael couldn't let this go pear-shaped. Still, she made eye contact with Ziva and held that for a second before she made to join her and DiNozzo.

By the time Yael made it to a little over a meter away, Ziva remembered that she was supposed to be angry: her shoulders rose again, and her jaw clenched.

Yael breathed through the ache in her chest.

Ziva did turn around and started walking back around the decrepit dolphinarium and towards the breakwater, though.

The thought came to Yael unbidden as the three of them walked wordlessly: that Noam would be angry if he knew what she was doing. Unsurprised, but angry nonetheless. Yael didn't think either DiNozzo or Ziva were a danger to her but then, that was why Noam's job description existed, and why there should have been two other people there with Yael.

Shira would be angry with Yael, too, but Yael wasn't sure whether her cousin would be surprised; Zvi or Shai - or Omer - wouldn't have been.

She had no idea what her mother would make of it, when she'd hear.

Once on the breakwater, Ziva didn't actually wait for them to find a spot to sit down at before she asked, in Hebrew: "Eich matzat otam bichlal?" _How'd you ever find them?_ There wasn't much of a question as to which _them_ Ziva meant.

"Hem aruchim negged mishtara, lo negged modi'in," Yael replied; _They're prepped against the police, not against intelligence_. Ziva could work out the rest of it for herself: that Ehud Tamir having brought his skillset to his new pastime made the team of which he was part a collections target. The Shin-Beit didn't need to prove in court what that team did; they only needed to be reasonably convinced they weren't a threat to the country itself.

"Lama lehistabech?" Ziva demanded, in Hebrew still. _Why bother?_

There were two answers to that question, the professional and the personal, and Yael was reasonably sure which one Ziva asked after. Maybe Ziva could work out the former for herself, maybe she couldn't; maybe Tamir had explained, maybe he hadn't. Either way, there was no doubt that it was the latter Ziva was asking after: why was Yael, personally, invested in Ziva not killing Luria with her own hands.

"Ki af pa'am od lo haragt mitoch nekama," Yael answered quietly. _Because you never killed in vengeance before_. Her attention was almost entirely on Ziva, taking in every possible detail that she _could_ take in in the nearly-moonless night.

Ziva startled as if jolted.

 

* * *

 

_21:30_

Tony only partially followed the conversation. Ziva asked something about a "them" that Yael had found, and Yael's answer had something to do with the police. Then Ziva asked something about getting in trouble -  or maybe going _to_ trouble, Tony wasn't sure. Yael's reply to that he understood only partially, but could deduce the parts he didn't understand from context.

Tony _could_ be wrong, but he was fairly certain that Yael just echoed one of Tony's own concerns with the path Ziva was on - and from which Yael somehow diverted her, even if minutely.

It was strange, hearing that statement from Yael Dunski. He accepted that she _cared,_ but he - expected her to care whether Ziva survived, perhaps, and not about the moral price of Ziva's actions. Yael might be _domestic_ intelligence but she was intelligence still, and Tony's experience with that was bitter.

Then there was the matter of Ziva responding as if she _believed_ Yael. Tony well remembered how wary Ziva had been of believing Yael or believing _in_ her, the one time they'd talked about it; but Ziva didn't respond to Yael with anger, which she would've done if she’d thought Yael was lying. It had happened earlier in the parking lot, too: Ziva had seen something, something that Tony had missed, and it made her put aside her anger.

It took Ziva a few seconds to recover from her shock. Then she demanded, in English: "When will _both_ of you stop trying to protect me?"

Well; that was a question Tony _could_ answer. He'd be taking a risk by saying out loud what he thought but then, he'd taken so many risks already that one more wouldn't make much of a difference. Tony swallowed, then said: "Never, probably."

Yael neither confirmed nor denied. For a long moment, Ziva didn't say anything either. Then she demanded of Yael, but still in English: "Why did you send Tony?"

"Because he pulled it off before," Yael replied evenly.

"Pulled _what_ off?"

"Brought you home."

This time, Ziva didn't pause to think at all before she snapped back: "I don't _have_ a home!"

Had Tony had any time to think - no: he was lying to himself. Even if he'd had time to consider what Ziva's response to that bland statement could be, her words would've still been a gut punch.

He thought he'd be bringing Ziva home.

 

* * *

 

_21:33_

Ziva had no idea that she was going to say that, that she _felt_ that way, until the words were already snatched by the wind. Yet once she'd said it, she knew it to be true; knew it to have been weighing on her for some time. Was it just the month she'd just spent in Israel that unsettled her so? No: she's been feeling at sea before, she just hadn't found the words for it until that moment.

_I don't have a home._

Silence lingered. Tony, unsurprisingly, looked as if he'd just been punched in the gut. Ziva tried to not look at him. Yael was as readable - or unreadable - as ever. No: there was the air of some emotion hanging about her. Ziva couldn't pinpoint the marks of it, but she could name it: sorrow. Yael was _sad._

"Be'emmet chashavt she'ani esha'er?" Ziva asked. _Did you really think I'd stay?_ She hated how bitter, how exposed her voice sounded.

Yael tilted her head to the side, then shook it slightly. "Lo," she said in Hebrew, _No,_ than continued in English: "Alive on the other side of the world is still alive. But to have no home…" Yael spread her arms to the sides, and left the sentence dangling.

It reminded Ziva of the last time she and Yael spoke, in the NCIS break room in January '12. Then, too, Yael had looked as if she'd mend the tatters of Ziva's life if only she could. Then, too, she couldn't.

"What do you want?" Tony quietly asked in the silence that followed.

"That is a very good question," Ziva replied, voice deliberately scathing.

Unsurprisingly, Tony didn't seem perturbed. "Also, I can't help but notice we're all still standing. Sitting down has distinct advantages. As do coffee, and central air."

Ziva stared at Tony, who managed to meet her gaze without flinching.

"I think," Yael said, "that may be too much, too fast. Yes?"

Ziva gave her a Look, as that was yet another piece of evidence that Yael _would_ protect Ziva.

Unsurprisingly, Yael met Ziva's eyes calmly.

Either Tony missed this exchange or he chose to ignore it. He  gestured with his palms skyward, and said: "Well, a man can dream, can't he?"

Ziva and Yael exchanged a look again; what Tony said was too perfect a serve.

Ziva huffed, and answered for them both: "So can a woman."

 

* * *

 

_Monday, 30 September, 08:00; Tel Aviv, Tzahala Qtr_

The house was quiet when Ziva woke up. The reason for that became apparent as soon as she looked at the time: she woke up late. Once upon a time that wouldn't have happened, and no matter how late she'd gone to sleep. That was probably a good thing, but Ziva found herself annoyed nevertheless. She was, apparently, yet to let go of the standards she'd been raised on.

Ziva got dressed and made her way downstairs quietly. Yaki was probably already gone to work, but Zohar could still be asleep - she’d returned home even later than Ziva had. She has no idea where Sa'ar was; he didn't keep a regular schedule.

As it turned out, Sa'ar and Zohar were both in the kitchen. They were sitting at the kitchen island with their coffee. Zohar hadn't bothered to change out of her pajamas, and looked as if she should be back in bed instead of sitting up. Given that as well as the fact that the two of them were strategically positioned to watch the stairs, Ziva got the feeling that they were waiting for her.

"Morning," she announced.

"Good morning," Sa'ar replied.

Zohar made a bleary wave.

Ziva checked that the electric kettle had enough water in it, then switched it on. She made herself instant coffee, then took her mug to the kitchen island and set across from her hosts.

"Zohar says you know one of Amit's and Shira's cousins," Sa'ar said without preamble.

"I said they knew each other, past tense," Zohar corrected him. "To be completely fair," she continued, addressing both Sa'ar and Ziva, "it looked like the way you and Yaki ''used to'' know each other when we met." She indicated the air quotes.

"There are a number of differences," Ziva said.

"Want to talk about it?" Sa'ar prompted after a few moments, when Ziva didn't continue.

"Not particularly."

"You looked pretty angry last night," Zohar said. "It made me worried."

She _had_ been very angry, so angry that it was impossible to hide. She wasn't that angry anymore, even if she was irritated still. "That's no longer a problem."

Zohar gave her a disbelieving look.

Sa'ar frowned. A moment later, he said: "You went and found her, didn't you."

Ziva bit back on a scathing reply. Having just dealt with _both_ Tony and Yael the night before, it was obvious to her by Sa'ar's tone that he wasn't attempting to pump her for information; he was just stating an observation.

"I'm glad you're not that angry, anymore," Zohar offered.

Ziva had no idea how to reply to that. It was strange, no longer being that angry. She'd been angry for a long time, long enough that the absence of the seething anger felt like an emptiness inside her. It wasn't a bad feeling, though; just a strange one.

A good few moments later and speaking slowly, Ziva surprised herself by saying: "So am I."

 

* * *

 

_17:15; Tel Aviv, Sde Dov Airport_

He'd ended up walking back to his hotel. It was a simple enough route: up on Herbert Samuel until Frishman, then straight ahead until Dizengoff and turn right. He hadn’t gone straight back up to his room, though. Rather, he’d sat at one of the bars on Dizengoff, where he nursed a beer and breathed in the atmosphere until he could deal with an empty hotel room.

Ziva wasn't coming back to DC with him. Remarkably, though, Tony didn't find himself wanting anything stronger than beer.

He did stay up the entire night. By the time the hotel's dining room opened in the morning, Tony had already made up his mind: he wouldn't be going on the first flight back to the States. He had no desire to give himself jet lag whiplash on top of regular-flavor jet lag and besides, the thought he'd had morning of the day before was still true: he couldn't remember the last time he'd been on an honest-to-goodness vacation.

Still, he couldn't stand to be in Tel Aviv. The touristy part of the city was small, and half of it was laden with memories. He needed to get out somehow. That was what Tony was doing at Sde Dov: the hotel staff had helpfully found him a plane ticket to and a hotel room in Eilat. A little over 200 miles away from Tel Aviv, the resort town was the farthest he could get away from Tel Aviv and still be in Israel. Hell, he didn't even have to stay _in_ Israel: Eilat bordered on both Jordan and the Sinai.

The important part was, Tony _was_ going to enjoy his vacation. Even if he was going to have to work at it, first.

As he waited to board his flight, it occurred to Tony that there was something else he should probably do. There were two people who knew just why Tony traveled to Israel. It was after 10AM back stateside; he couldn't call McGee without Gibbs immediately knowing about it, and Tony didn't particularly feel like doing that. Instead, he called Vance's office and asked Cynthia for the director.

"Good morning, Sir," he said as soon as Vance picked up the phone.

"Agent DiNozzo." Vance sounded as if he perked up at recognizing his voice. "I admit I didn't expect you to call back this soon."

"Neither did I."

"How is vacation?"

"Well, I'm probably going to come back alive."

There was a brief pause as Vance processed what that implied. "Will Agent McGee need to book another ticket?"

"Not at this point."

"Not at this point," Vance repeated. "But at some point?"

"Possibly." Tony rubbed his forehead. "To tell the truth, I have no idea."

"Well." The director paused for a moment, then said: "In that case, I'm going to ask you again how is vacation."

"About to get very vacation-y. I'm hopping down to Eilat."

"You have a good time, DiNozzo."

"Thank you, Sir."

Tony pocketed his phone. Just in time: the gate just opened for boarding.

Tony shouldered his bag, and stepped forward.

 

* * *

 

_20:00; Tel Aviv, Old North Qtr_

Yael met him at her apartment's door still in her office clothes and her hair still in a ponytail. At least she was barefoot.

"Coffee?" she asked when they broke apart from their kiss hello.

"Sure," Noam replied.

Yael stepped to the right into the kitchen, and left him to take in her living room.

He hadn't consciously thought about what Yael's apartment might look like. If he had, he might've expected the large framed photographs of Israeli nature vistas, their azure hot and vivid. He wouldn't have expected the bright yellow of the couch, though.

Given that _was_ what Yael's living room looked like, though, Noam wasn't surprised that the pot Yael put on the stove was ornate enamel and not the usual plain stainless steel.

Yael grabbed two glasses from the cupboard and filled them from the Britta jug. While she did that, Noam's eyes traveled to the kitchen table. The table wasn't particularly interesting. The reason Noam's attention stayed on it was because there were only two items on it:  a pen, and a single plain cardboard folder.

He didn't need to ask to know where that folder came from, or to know that it was the reason Yael invited him over.

Something was up, and Noam wasn't sure he liked it.

Yael handed him one glass, put the other one on the table - after emptying half of it - then handed him the folder.

"Your call," she said.

Noam sat down, drank some water, then opened the folder.

It was need-to-know paperwork. And the emblem printed on the pages wasn't the Service's; it was the _malmab_ 's.

So _that_ was where Yael's mystery files came from. Noam looked up at her.

She was looking back at him intently. "It isn't full disclosure. But it should be enough."

There was _no reason_ for him to be given access, any access, to Yael's over-the-top classified files that - he understood now - her mom had to be giving her directly, thus minimizing the number of people who _needed_ to know. Noam didn't _need_ to know. This sort of a thing was only done -

Noam's breath caught as he realized what he was holding. Spousal access. He was being offered _spousal access._ It was mind boggling: that in the one month he and Yael had been dating her mother had gone to the trouble of vetting his file - and given the specifics Noam had no doubt that she'd done that personally - that she decided to extend this offer and, just as improbably, that Yael decided to go forward with it.

In the terms of the Israeli Intelligence Community, the folder Noam was holding was the equivalent of a marriage contract.

 _Your call_ , Yael said. Were there a right choice and a wrong choice? Would there be repercussions if he chose the wrong one? Up until three weeks before, he'd've been genuinely worried about that. Now, though, he knew better: Yael wasn't that person, and this wasn't a test. It was precisely what she said it was: she'd given him the choice, and now it was his.

He knew what he wanted.

He reached for the pen, and started signing the paperwork.

 


End file.
